Yet that seems to be exactly what you and the defense team our doing.
[rummaging through closet]
I know I’ve got the World’s Smallest Violin in here somewhere…where is it??
That noise you hear is the point going past you. 
But if you want to play the smallest violin, play something lively. I like Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in thumb minor…
So let me get this straight: your point wasn’t that “the left is trying to paint Kyle as a demon” just because he traveled to another state with a hunting rifle to “attend” an anti-police-brutality protest? If that’s the case, and you do/did have a cogent point to get across, please enlighten me.
Besides, I prefer Vivaldi’s “Four Tweezers”.
Neither. My point was in the second paragraph…both sides are, once again, doing their best to paint a specific narrative. The left is trying to paint this guy as a demon. The right as a hero. It is, once again, a left/right pissing match. Sorry if this was confusing or lost on you. I realize you probably have a dog in this fight, so your side’s narrative is what you believe. To me, both sides’ narratives on this are just wrong. For instance, I see you didn’t mention that the others in this drama going to this protest were also armed, and also decided it was a good idea to confront the kid with a rifle and chase him about, beating on him, trying to take away his gun and otherwise doing really, really stupid shit that would be better handled by the police.
It’s all about the narrative and how you are spinning this story, IMHO. I’ve heard the right-wingers going on and on about this, and I’ve seen the demonization in the press. To me, this is a complex mess that, again, doesn’t have good guys verse bad guys, but instead fuckups fucking up on both sides of the dispute and doing really, really stupid shit.
As for the legality, well, that’s up to the jury to decide. Frankly, I’d be good with throwing the lot in jail, but, happily, I’m not on the jury and don’t have to decide. And I’m not qualified to go into the hair-splitting legalities that seem to be driving much of this discussion.
That is a good one as well, especially on the smallest violin. Other pieces just sound too tinny on the smallest violin.
I have trouble taking it seriously when people keep pointing out that he “went to another state” as if it has a significant or salient value in assessing Kyle’s motivations. In terms of the original (now discarded) gun charge, the crossing of state lines may have been important from a legal standpoint (but ended up not being since he did not transport the gun across state lines.) From a motivation standpoint the representation is Kyle was an “outsider” not local to Kenosha and came in specifically to cause trouble.
Kyle may have indeed gone down to Kenosha to cause trouble, I don’t know that and none of us really know that. But the “outsider” thing is silly. I’m guessing most of you have never lived near a state line before, or near communities that straddle them. These are State lines, not national ones. It’s like saying someone who “crossed the state line” to get from Covington Kentucky to Mason, Ohio and then subsequently got involved in a shooting was someone who had traveled in from afar to cause trouble. When, matter of fact, both cities are part of the Cincinnati metro–in fact both are on the Cincinnati betlway. There are similar cross state communities around DC/VA/MD, NY/NJ, PA/NJ down by Philly etc.
At the time of the shooting Rittenhouse was living with his mother in Antioch IL. This part of Illinois is the collection of smaller cities and towns that stretch north past the “North Shore” of Chicago, and eventually merge into similar small cities that radiate out from Milwaukee. Antioch is actually fairly close to equidistant from Chicago proper and Milwaukee proper. Kenosha is on the shore of Lake Michigan, and is matter of fact the closest town of significant size to where Kyle lived. It’s also where his father lived and where he has held a job previously, it’s a 20 minute car ride and the closest decent sized city to his house. He’s essentially a local.
Now closing in on 900 posts and I still don’t understand the weight people are putting on coming from a different state. I routinely drive to Pennsylvania just to get a meal. Crossing the border really isn’t a big deal. Rosenbaum travelled the same exact distance but he drove south instead of west so apparently that doesn’t matter. I guess some people were hoping for a federal gun charge or something but that was ruled out pretty quickly.
I honestly get the impression it’s just people who have never lived near a state line, and don’t understand that for people who do…crossing those lines is not a big deal. No different from crossing a county or municipal line, people talk about it like he crossed into Canada.
Ninjed on the last post.
I can’t for the life of me imagine any other reason he showed up there and obtained a gun. If we define “Cause trouble” broadly.
And I get that, but I think that’s a cultural thing you just don’t understand. I certainly don’t live my life that way, but I’m familiar with it to understand it. It might be unusual where you live, I do not know. But there are large swathes of America where a significant portion of the population simply feels they need to be armed anytime they are in public. I don’t agree with the mentality, but it is not really them looking to cause trouble, at least not innately. If it were we’d have a lot more trouble than we have going on.
The move to open carry vs concealed carry (which was more the norm for this crowd in the past) is part of a very deliberate motive in the broader “hardcore 2nd Amendment” community to “normalize” the open carrying of firearms. Like I said, if all the people who do this shot people we’d literally be like in Civil War levels of death going on every month.
To be fair, I don’t think we’ve heard that argument offered up by too many people who reside close to Four Corners.
Or Farwell Texas.
I think people are focusing on the ‘state line’ issue because it’s being routinely invoked by pundits on CNN, MSNBC, etc. I heard Joe Scarborough say that KR fired off SIXTY rounds. Joe Biden called him a ‘White Supremacist’ and a ‘Militia member’. The disinformation on the left over this is off the charts, which is ehy so many consumers of that media have been left scratching thrir heads over the trial.
Yesterday a talking head on MSNBC accused the judge of making Asians unsafe with his racist comments, which should disqualify him. I looked up the ‘racist comments’, and all I found was at one point the judge ssid, “Let’s break for lunch until one. I hope our Asian food isn’t on one of those container ships.” Which would be a supply-chain joke, not an Asian joke. And not remotely racist or threatening to anyone.
Is that incorrect? maybe “wannabe militia member” would be better.
Do you have any evidence that he’s a white supremacist? That’s slanderous, and Biden should have known better than to say that about a private citizen who is not a public figure. The Rittenhouse family is planning to sue for defamation. I’m not sure they can while he’s in office, though.
Also, CBS called him a ‘murderer’. Not alleged, just “Kyle Rittenhouse, who murdered two people and wounded one…” And other talking heads have been doing similar character assassination.
This is going to shape up like the Covington kid’s lawsuits, which extracted millions out of the news agencies who slandered him. What is wrong with lefty commentators that they can’t constrain themselves from slandering minors?
Pardon me all to hell for living in an area where driving a hour in each direction causes me to cross state lines.
Right. Poor old Kyle went there to buy gum. Those mean old protesters bothered him and he just felt it necessary to gun them down.
We keep mollycoddlying domestic terrorists like this, we’re just asking for another January 6th.
I think it is about as relevant as how far Rosenbaum travelled. Neither of them were from Kenosha, they both made the trip there just to get involved in a situation that they otherwise had no business being involved in. Rosenbaum to cause chaos and Rittenhouse to play the hero. It’s not quite the same thing as someone in Newport, KY driving into downtown Cincy to grab a bite to eat.
It’s relevant, to me, in terms of the firearm purchase. He didn’t have a firearm ID to be able to buy or possess a firearm in IL, so he gave a friend money to buy it in a different state where the laws were less strict. It may not be the crime of the century, or even a crime at all, but it shows a certain dedication to acquiring a gun just for the purpose of playing hero. Wasn’t like he had it lying around, he had to figure out a workaround for the laws in Illinois.
Rittenhouse was part of the Kenosha community and has stated his motivations for going there to protect businesses, earlier in the day he was cleaning up graffiti. I think Rittenhouse had a lot of misguided ideas about why he should go down there that night, but it was part of the Kenosha community, not an outsider.
Point of fact it wouldn’t matter if they could sue Biden while he was in office. The alleged tweet is found here:
And doesn’t mention Rittenhouse by name. It would not stand even the thinnest veneer of scrutiny in a defamation case. Even if Biden had directly called him a white supremacist it is unlikely that would meet the definition of defamation–you’re allowed to express negative opinions about someone, and it is difficult to establish the factual veracity of someone’s views on white supremacism.
I wasn’t blaming Rittenhouse. I was making an “in hindsight” observation.
You, on the other hand, have repeatedly smeared the deceased as “rioters and looters”. And you’re right - it’s not a good look.
Greta Thunberg might want a word.