Charles Pierce is a wonderful writer who has a regular column in Esquire magazine. He often seems to write just what I was thinking. If you truly believe in law and order, which Republicans say they do, you can’t be happy that Rittenhouse killed two people and maimed a third, and will suffer no consequences. To the contrary, Rightwing extremists—now in control of the Republican Party—are treating him as a hero.
Pierce writes:
So the country is pretty broken.
The fact that Kyle Rittenhouse walked away free from the courthouse in Kenosha cannot be a surprise. The trial was headed on a straight line to this verdict for weeks, nudged along by a judge who clearly was enjoying the spotlight that had come down on his private little satrapy, and by a mediocre prosecution that also was hamstrung by the quirks of Wisconsin law. For example, there is no state manslaughter statute, which surely might have been helpful.
The most poignant words out of the courthouse came from the families of the two people Rittenhouse killed, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, who said that they felt abandoned by the prosecution, that the prosecutors did not seem to advocate for the dead and wounded. Given that, in almost every trial, the prosecution spares nothing to use the family members of the victims to inspire sympathy from the jury—and, occasionally, from the judge as well—the fact that the families of the people whom Kyle Rittenhouse killed felt abandoned strikes me as extraordinary. I don’t know where all the Victims’ Rights firebrands are, but they weren’t in Kenosha. Hell, the people Kyle Rittenhouse shot weren’t even allowed to be referred to as victims in court.
What I do not feel right now is safer.
I’ve tried to imagine how I would have felt were I on a sidewalk in Kenosha that night and saw this pudgy little fellow walking up the center of the street with his AR-15, preferred weapon of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, strapped across his chest. I guarantee I would not have felt safer. I would not believe that Kyle Rittenhouse was there to protect me. Upon seeing him, I would’ve concluded that things were getting dangerously out of control and that it was time to find some safe place to be for a while. I would wonder why somebody gave Lumpy Rutherford a military-grade weapon and turned him loose in a situation already grown volatile…
It is only a matter of time, and after yesterday’s verdict, you can reset the Doomsday Clock a little closer to midnight.
Open the link to finish the article.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How about this “goodie”?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants Congressional Gold Medal for Kyle Rittenhouse
November 25, 2021
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a bill this week to award Congress’ highest honor to Kyle Rittenhouse, less than one week after the teenager was found not guilty in his homicide trial.
The Georgia Republican introduced the bill on Tuesday. A summary of the bill says the measure would “award a Congressional Gold Medal to Kyle H. Rittenhouse, who protected the community of Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a Black Lives Matter (BLM) riot on August 25, 2020.”
To be successful, Congressional Gold Medal requests need to be co-sponsored by two-thirds in both chambers of Congress — which are currently controlled by Democrats — making the chances of Greene’s bill succeeding very low. After it is co-sponsored, the bill would then be considered by the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs before being authorized by the president.
https://nypost.com/2021/11/25/marjorie-taylor-greene-wants-congressional-gold-medal-for-kyle-rittenhouse/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
Wow, this is just jaw dropping. If Trump were president, he’d be awarding the pudgy assassin the Medal of Freedom. Others who had their finger on that trigger: Hannity, Carlson, Gosar, Fox News and the whole army of right wing flame throwers on hate wing radio.
One commenter following article wrote, “During this dark episode in NRA fund raising….”
That’s what it all comes down to…. the marketing of an ideology to make profits…. and using this episode to increase profits . . .
https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethmacbride/2018/11/25/americas-gun-business-is-28b-the-gun-violence-business-is-bigger/?sh=6b2709523ae8
The over the top, glorified violence in movies and video games…. all part of the network
it’s too big to fight
especially when we have these networks funding candidates like MTGreene.
Contrast the Esquire essay with the Quillette essay that I again link below. The Esquire essay is 100% emotion, with not even a surface-level analysis of the legal issues that pertain to the specific trial. It’s the difference between a minimally-informed pundit pushing an ideological agenda (Esquire) and a deeply informed legal expert who doesn’t allow his distaste for the defendant to warp his professional judgment (Quillette).
https://quillette.com/2021/11/23/the-rittenhouse-trial-a-legal-scholar-responds/
So you are all peachy keen with some 17 year old playing at Rambo? He should have been at his home in Antioch, Illinois, not operating as a vigilante or acting as a substitute for the police in that highly charged situation. Seventeen year old males don’t always make the most judicious choices, to say the least. He was parading around with his assault style semi-automatic rifle looking for trouble. If he weren’t looking for trouble, he would have been at his home. Now he’s a hero to all the right wingers who love guns more than life itself.
From factcheckdotorg: quote – Black himself has been charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor, causing death. His own trial has been delayed until after the Rittenhouse trial has finished. end quote
It’s bigger than individual choices.
Gun violence is big business:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethmacbride/2018/11/25/americas-gun-business-is-28b-the-gun-violence-business-is-bigger/?sh=6b2709523ae8
The Esquire piece is a well written OPINION piece by a respected author. I agree with Charles Pierce’s opinion, personal analysis and beliefs. He has a right to express his opinion and it’s not disguised as anything less.
As far as the particulars of the law and trial – of course – we do not know what the jury heard and there is a legal protocol to follow. The Quillette piece – a lawyers professional judgement – may or may not be a good analysis. I do not know the laws of WI or what the jury heard. And I am not a lawyer.
However, I do not need to be a lawyer to know that I do not want 17 year olds to travel to protests with AR17’s – in order to become a vigilante and to put themselves in a volatile position – in the mix of increased tensions to take control of a situation.
I want trained professionals to be in charge of such situations – which leads to decreased chance of senseless bloodshed. We could have avoided the loss of 3 losses. Real people who have families grieving them.
Joe, Beach, others, the debate in which you are engaged is quite different from the one the honorable Ms. Kinney, Esq., conducts. Hers is a legal argument that seems to revel in her superior legal omniscience because she can cite some article somewhere that confirms her thesis. And let’s not forget the judge, jury, state legislators who made her argument possible.
But here’s the thing. If she’s even close to the whiz kid she implies she is, she also knows she could have argued a much more effective legal case than the flawed prosecution did–even within the parameters of the same laws on the books, not sure about the judge, though–and gotten convictions on most if not all counts. Now if she’s honest and truly a professional, I doubt she’d disagree.
The merits of the arguments you make in response to her and the fact that the same case with the same facts would have had a much different outcome in many states. If it had happened without any video evidence, there would not have been a trial. If Rittenhouse were Black, as many commentators here have noted, he would not have lived to face a trial and this “discussion” about a legal process would be moot. In court, that is.
Please observe that our one-note attorney is rendered speechless. Guess that was either an online diploma or from W. Michigan law school. I guess the only attorneys we attract here are ones who are only capable of throwing out unreasoned temper tantrums and incapable of using supporting evidence.
Hopefully this trail will spur the rational citizens of Wisconsin to work to change laws – in order to make the streets safer and not embolden vigilantes.
I think that the question raised by the post above was not whether the jury acted in accordance with Wisconsin law but what message this trial and verdict sends to gun-toting SA vigilantes around the country like the folks who showed up at the Michigan statehouse last summer.
Amanda Kinney, I read the article you linked to and this is what it said:
” If Rittenhouse had been black, he most assuredly would have been convicted. I suspect the jury would have found—at least with respect to Huber and Rosenbaum that his fear of death or serious bodily injury was not reasonable. Or, they would have found that this hypothetical black man provoked the situation. Consider the following counterfactual. A black man is roaming the streets of a Proud Boys rally with a rifle in tow. He ends up killing two protestors and injuring another. My belief is that the exact same Rittenhouse jury would apply the law to the facts of this counterfactual case differently. The result would be conviction. Data support this view. We know that blacks are convicted for homicide at significantly higher rates when the victim is white. And the history of this country’s reaction to blacks wielding firearms affirms my suspicions.”
Thank you Amanda Kinney for endorsing that view that Kyle Rittenhouse would have been convicted had he been black.
Amanda Kinney writes: “a deeply informed legal expert who doesn’t allow his distaste for the defendant to warp his professional judgment (Quillette).”
I am so glad to see Amanda Kinney endorse the view that Kyle Rittenhouse would have been convicted if he were black.”
After all, that’s what “a deeply informed legal expert who doesn’t allow his distaste for the defendant to warp his professional judgment” says.
“If Rittenhouse had been black, he most assuredly would have been convicted. I suspect the jury would have found—at least with respect to Huber and Rosenbaum that his fear of death or serious bodily injury was not reasonable. Or, they would have found that this hypothetical black man provoked the situation. ”
Thanks for endorsing that view, Amanda Kinney!
More to the overall point of the article, I haven’t felt safe (in the sense of my duties and obligations as a free citizen in a democratic-republic) for quite some time and have a sincere dread that things will get far worse, far faster, and far more efficiently than anyone can now imagine. The pandemic has sped up the process of creating Arendt’s community of isolated fellow travelers. The very nature of representative government is at risk. Now. Not tomorrow.
Many people are willing to go along and get along with this permanent, speedy destruction of any semblance of civil public life with individual rights. Even more, it seems, are willing to excuse and encourage them to grow their ranks.
We are all so busy making ends meet..and living our busy lives….. it’s exhausting to think about getting involved in the messiness of our “duties and responsibilities.”
To your point of “going along to get along” – social media has made that an even more expedient course of action since you can be harassed if you try to combat negative forces and get too involved.
Maybe this will provide a glimmer of hope. Maybe it’s not as bad as we think:
https://gen.medium.com/doing-our-bit-to-avoid-a-civil-war-2b971261b781
I do not feel safer after the Kenosha trial but I do feel safer after the Glynn County trial.
I think it is interesting how feeling unsafe generates so many more comments then feeling safe. On this blog the first post about the Kenosha verdict drew 177 comments and the only post about the Glynn County verdict had a grand total of 4 comments. Anger and fear drive interest on the internet.
When something is not right, there is more to talk about. This is not news.
Fox News depends on “something being not right, there is more to talk about”. If people do not understand this bias and how this drives us all to think that the world is falling apart (of course in different ways), we are likely doomed.
Do people feel less or more safe after learning that a man drove an SUV into a holiday parade and murdered six people and injured 62 others, none of whom were brandishing weapons or engaging in a riot?
Less safe.
We are facing many epidemics in this country.
However you are comparing apples to oranges. Not the same story.
It wasn’t murder. It was manslaughter. He was not trying to hurt anyone. He was out of his mind.
And he will certainly go to jail. I bet on it.
Just to be clear, you actually just typed the words “he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”
Good job Flerp. You combed the comments and found something to jump on.
No one is defending this person. It’s horrifying that this happened.
I type fast…. I meant – “it wasn’t murder (pre-meditated)”…. and it’s a different case.
He should, and will, go to jail. There is no argument or debate there.
LOL, I didn’t “comb the comments.” I looked at your response to my comment.
Your second try (“it wasn’t murder”) isn’t much better. You’re free to believe Darrell Brooks did not murder anybody, but he is charged with six counts of first-degree murder.
Careful, Flerp. You’re raising a topic that doesn’t advance the preferred narratives of this blog’s readership.
Amanda Kinney, thank you for pointing us all to the Quillette article you keep citing as the truthful view that you endorse:
“If Rittenhouse had been black, he most assuredly would have been convicted. I suspect the jury would have found—at least with respect to Huber and Rosenbaum that his fear of death or serious bodily injury was not reasonable. Or, they would have found that this hypothetical black man provoked the situation. Consider the following counterfactual. A black man is roaming the streets of a Proud Boys rally with a rifle in tow. He ends up killing two protestors and injuring another. My belief is that the exact same Rittenhouse jury would apply the law to the facts of this counterfactual case differently. The result would be conviction. Data support this view. We know that blacks are convicted for homicide at significantly higher rates when the victim is white. And the history of this country’s reaction to blacks wielding firearms affirms my suspicions.”
I am glad you endorse that view, too.
How does this relate to the discussion above and what is your point?
Are you trying to draw some kind of equivalency?
The Las Vegas massacre of Oct. 1, 2017, killed 58 and wounded over 515 people. Stephen Paddock’s motive remains one of America’s greatest mysteries.
The maniac who ran over and slaughtered 6 and injured 62 others should have been in jail from previous offenses. It’s all horrible and it does make me feel less safe, especially when in crowds.
Did you feel less or more safe after all the school massacres?
I loved the headline in The Onion that read
“Nothing can be done about gun violence,” says only country where mass shootings are a daily occurrence
LITERALLY, a daily occurrence. Defining mass shooting as one involving four people, excluding the perpetrator, being shot, there has been one a day in the US since 2013.
Lawyers are so proficient in non sequiturs. Do you feel less safe knowing objects fall randomly from space that could kill people? See how that works?
I knew a guy in Arizona who had a golf ball sized meteorite fall on the patio just behind his house one night, narrowly missing the room where he slept. I held the rock in my hand.
And, yes, I feel less safe knowing that that can happen.
But I don’t usually lose sleep over it.
Coincidentally, he was actually an astronomy grad student studying meteorites!
Jeez ….. thanks Greg and SomeDam Poet.
Now I have one more thing to worry about. 😉
For a similar reason, I also feel less safe after the Big Bang.
Things were so much calmer before.
Not only that, do you realize with each passing day from the moment we are born, we are moving closer toward death? That birth thing can be so deadly.
While we are on the subject, I also feel less safe knowing that there is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.
Also feel less safe knowing that our sun will one day expand greatly to become a red giant star that extends well beyond Earth’s orbit. When it will happen is of less concern that it WILL happen.
I also feel less safe knowing that supermassive a-hole might get reelected in 3 years.
By the way, getting killed by a meteorite would quite literally fall under “mass killing”
a mass killing. lol
flerp’s motive in presenting an analogy in which he compares a white person who is being celebrated and rewarded after killing people with a black man who is clearly going to be punished and whose actions no one is defending is beyond me. But suffice to say that I bet no one can come up with a motive that is good.
It is beyond appalling that two people who weren’t brandishing weapons are dead. Two people who were a danger to no one except a teen armed with an assault weapon.
And a special place in you know where is reserved for those who are actually try to justify the attempted murder of the only victim who was “brandishing a weapon”, because that victim brandished the weapon in an attempt to disarm a gunman armed with an assault weapon who had already killed a person in cold blood.
Leaving out that inconvenient fact speaks volumes. The people who believed the only “armed” victim deserved to die because he wasn’t cold blooded enough to simply shoot Kyle Rittenhouse dead but tried to disarm him instead. What is wrong with them?
Celebrating and honoring an armed gunman who kills people incentivizes more people to do that. Maybe they will get to pose with Trump, too.
And no one is celebrating a a person who mows down innocent people with a car, a man who is clearly going to prison. So why cite that example instead of citing the white Trump supporter who mowed down multiple people in a church? I think we all understand why.
Republicans could raise taxes on billionaires and allocate it to mental illness treatment.
Most billionaires live in rarefied environments which keep them distant from dangerous people with untreated mental illness. More’s the pity.
Flerp– What should make Wisconsinites feel less safe about that crime is that the accused was free on $1k bail for having tried to run over the mother of his child a couple of weeks prior (with the same car). 6 days later he speeds away from a domestic dispute involving a knife and mows down families at a holiday parade.
Correction: chased her into a parking garage (after punching her) and hit her with his car, running over her leg.
In general Americans should be more concerned about being killed by guns than about being killed by vehicles while walking.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-gun-death-murder-risk-statistics-2018-3
As noted in the article the statistics presented “do not account for a person’s specific behaviors, age, sex, location, or other factors that could shift the results; it’s an average of the entire US population.
But [they] clearly show that gun violence in the US is a leading cause of death, which is how the CDC describes firearm homicides in its National Vital Statistics Report”
Thank you for the correction – I shouldn’t have assumed the charge.
I’ve posted the Harvard law professor’s essay twice because it has enough length to sufficiently cover the important points of the Rittenhouse trial. The Esquire piece has zero analysis – pure emotion which appeals to ideologues who are impervious to actual evidence. That Harvard professor is highly regarded in criminal law circles, and no one here can blithely dismiss his expertise.
Let’s make up a counterfactual situation. A 25 year old man named Kyle shows up at the scene of a second night of rioting. He is armed with a 9 mm handgun, for which he has a concealed carry permit obtained per legal requirements. Wisconsin law allows him to be at that riot so long as he doesn’t participate in it, e.g. set fires, throw rocks, etc. In the chaos of the riot, he is accosted by three separate men during three different times. One man points a gun at him, so Kyle shoots him in the arm and wounds him; that man later admits that his own gun was loaded and that he did in fact point it at Kyle. A second man chases Kyle down and hits him in the head with a skateboard, after previously threatening to kill him, which others in the vicinity also heard. Kyle shoots this second man in the head and kills him. A third man accosts Kyle in a threatening manner, and in the chaos of the riot and in the heat of the moment Kyle also shoots him in the head and kills him.
The case goes to trial. The defense attorney points out to the jury that Kyle was lawfully armed with the 9 mm gun; the defense can’t object – that was the law at the time of the events described here. Kyle also had the right to be where he was, although no prudent person would attend a riot. So the only question for the jury to decide is if – looking at the totality of the circumstances – Kyle’s claim of self-defense is justified. The burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the self-defense claim is NOT justified. An acquittal would occur 99+% of the time in these circumstances.
Back to the real Kyle Rittenhouse trial – change the age of the defendant and the weapon used and the case is identical to my counterfactual. Rittenhouse had a right to be there and a right to have that weapon, as the judge ruled. The lead prosecutor can be fairly criticized for some tactical errors, but he was playing a very weak hand, with more than enough defense evidence – especially video evidence – to justify an acquittal.
I agree that it should not be legal for anyone to carry an AR-15 or the like in public, and no way should a 17 year old – or any other civilian – go to a riot armed or unarmed. I prosecuted many dozens of cases over 16 years, none of them close to being as weak for the prosecution as was the Rittenhouse case. Thousands of other experienced prosecutors could say the same thing.
Back to my point. The Esquire piece was not meant to be a legal analysis.
I do not doubt that what you wrote isn’t a rationale, legal analysis.
But the Esquire piece was meant to be a human analysis.
And the question was – “Do you feel safer after the Kenosha trial?” Not, “let’s debate the legal merits of the case.”
Beachteach, as others have said, the verdict in Kenosha might incite more vigilantism. That’s frightening.
Again, the issue before us is not whether the jury acted in accordance with the law of the state of Wisconsin. Unlike a few others here, I readily concede that, alas, it did. The issues raised by the post above are, rather,
our insane gun laws,
the almost unparalleled level of gun violence and mass shootings in this country,
vigilantism, and
the messages that these events and Wisconsin law send to the following:
the Trumpy Sturmabteilung/brownshirts that we saw summer before last at the Michigan statehouse and at the US Capitol building on Jan. 6 of this year,
the aggrieved incels in the US, fed on right-wing militarism, looking to join the ranks of school shooters and be heroes in their own minds.
Amanda Kinney keeps linking to the “Harvard law school professor’s essay”, which she says we should all believe.
So let’s state for the record that Amanda Kinney absolutely believes that if Kyle Rittenhouse was Black he would ave been convicted regardless of the law.
Here is a quote from the quillette article Amanda Kinney cites:
” If Rittenhouse had been black, he most assuredly would have been convicted. I suspect the jury would have found—at least with respect to Huber and Rosenbaum that his fear of death or serious bodily injury was not reasonable. Or, they would have found that this hypothetical black man provoked the situation. Consider the following counterfactual. A black man is roaming the streets of a Proud Boys rally with a rifle in tow. He ends up killing two protestors and injuring another. My belief is that the exact same Rittenhouse jury would apply the law to the facts of this counterfactual case differently. The result would be conviction. Data support this view. We know that blacks are convicted for homicide at significantly higher rates when the victim is white. And the history of this country’s reaction to blacks wielding firearms affirms my suspicions.”
Amanda Kinney, I appreciate your endorsement of the “Harvard law school professor’s” view.
Amanda: had you been the prosecutor, what statues would you have used to make a case against something that surely should not have been lawful (as you stated in your last paragraph, above)? What should statutory law say about arming oneself and going to a social disturbance? Aside from the circus surrounding this case, how can this whole affair simply end with nothingness?
Safety is one of the basics. Along with food and shelter, the relative certainty of such had been the basis for stable government for centuries. While sacrificing some freedom for safety can be dangerous, it is necessary. Otherwise, those who feel vulnerable will look to tyranny as they so often have.
So we have laws that cover situations. Looks like this one needs some laws.
More reports of anti-social behavior:
https://news.yahoo.com/best-buy-robbed-large-group-180542580.html
https://www.wcvb.com/article/82-year-old-attacked-by-pack-of-boston-atv-dirt-bike-riders-says-it-hurts-to-cry-in-thanksgiving-message/38362001
We could wait for suspects to be caught and go on trial and debate the legal merits of the cases. Or we could discuss the bigger picture “narrative” of how to work towards a more just, peaceful, kind country.
Building strong, public schools and public services (point of this blog) are part of the solution.
Not a “NARRATIVE”
a purpose.
Thank you, beachteach, well stated. As if Amanda doesn’t have her “narrative” and highly slanted point of view.
If Kyle R. had been clobbered by the guy carrying the skateboard, then the skateboarder would have claimed self-defense. The NSA (National Skateboard Association) establishes that in cases of self-defense, the skateboard may be used as a lethal weapon and things of that nature.
Amen, Ginny!
Wrong be….
Gun Violence Archive, frequently cited by the press, defines a mass shooting as firearm violence resulting in at least four people being shot at roughly the same time and location, excluding the perpetrator. Using this definition, there have been 2,128 mass shootings since 2013, roughly one per day.
Using this definition, there have been 2,128 mass shootings in the US since 2013, close to one per day.
Sad commentary on our reckless gun laws. Europe has many fewer gun related deaths as they have much more restricted gun laws.
The Wisconsin firearms carry law has this sort of form: No man may wear Speedos on the beach, with the exception of all men except those prevented from wearing Speedos on the beach by the laws against men wearing Speedos on the beach while eating cheese whiz and against men wearing Speedos on the beach while singing Neil Diamond songs. Under such law, the only people who could be prosecuted for wearing Speedos on the beach would be those men who were eating cheese whiz or singing Neil Diamond songs while doing so. Insane, right?
I think that the questions that people should be asking are these:
How does such a convoluted, crazy, and dangerous set of statutes come to be written?
What should those be replaced with?
What assistance did idiot Wisconsin legislators get from what gun lobbyists to draft such laws–ones that pretend to address the issue but contain gaps big enough to drive almost any egregious action with guns through them?
Hey, here’s a gun control law for you. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
Such a set of laws would obviously be one drafted to give the appearance of addressing the issue of men wearing Speedos on the beach while actually exempting almost all men, in almost all circumstances, from the law.
Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
Journalists, Here’s your homework assignment:
Familiarize yourself with the relevant texts–the Wisconsin firearms carry statutes. Then find out what vile anti-gun-control lobbyists, stupid but with a low cunning, assisted what duplicitous legislators in drafting these INTENTIONALLY enfeebled, ineffectual statutes.
You know where I can get the Cliffs Notes? Or better yet, the Cliffs Notes of the Cliffs Notes? Which parts of this will be on the test?
It’s a test, but I can tell you now. We all fail.
Oh good! Now I don’t have to study. Love these fail/fail courses. So egalitarian!
OK. Let me revise that, Greg. If you are a rich, white, male, heterosexual fascist, then you win big over the next decade.
My question is: are the statutes weak, or did the prosecution just punt on first down?
The statutes are as I described them. See Diane’s previous post on the Rittenhouse story. I shared them and analyzed them there.
OK. I’ll save you the trouble of finding that:
Wisconsin Statute 948.60(2)(a) states that “Any person under 18 years of age who possesses or goes armed with a dangerous weapon is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor.”
However, WS948.60(3)(c) excludes from coverage under that statute people under 18 EXCEPT those who are in violation of WS941.28 or 29.304 and 29.539.
941.28(2) says, “No person may sell or offer to sell, transport, purchase, possess or go armed with a short-barreled shotgun or short-barreled rifle.” The rifle carried by Rittenhouse doesn’t meet that description. It was an AR-15 style rifle, not one of the kind usually referred to as a “short-barreled rifle.”
29.304(b) also exempts Rittenhouse, for it reads, “Restrictions on possession or control of a firearm. No person 14 years of age or older but under 16 years of age may have in his or her possession or control any firearm” and goes on to list exemptions. Rittenhouse was over 16, so he is excused from that, too.
Section 29.593 requires a certificate of accomplishment to obtain hunting approval. Rittenhouse wasn’t engaged in hunting, as that is defined. So, that doesn’t apply here.
So, even though it is TOTALLY ABSURD, Rittenhouse’s running around playing vigilante with an AR15-style weapon in his hands was legal under Wisconsin law.
Is this insane? Yes, of course it is.
And, ofc, the prosecutor had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt (a very high standard) that Rittenhouse was NOT acting in self defense as defined in Wisconsin law.
Bob: thanks for the redo. What I really wonder about is latitude a prosecutor usually has to seek something that would stick. The whole thing seems theatrical. The judge with his periodic castigation of the prosecution and Veterans Day praising of a witness.
No one has reacted to the craziness of these laws or to my point about how such utterly ineffectual laws get written. I am saddened by this. One can’t even get these matters considered in this forum, much less in the wider public one.
My point is that there are enormous problems with the laws in Wisconsin and in lots of other places in the United States. But it’s not a sound bite, so it’s difficult to get it across to the public at large.
I saw this often in the business world, where people would readily find individuals to blame for this or that but couldn’t be bothered to think about the systemic issues that were the root causes. People would be quick to say, “Jones needs to be fired” when he failed to update his CRM report but didn’t want to think about the fact that all the salespeople were not properly updating their CRM reports because these would give away the contacts they had built over years so that they could be replaced by youngsters. Or C-level folks would freak out because managers weren’t keeping their PERT and GANTT charts up to date but fail to understand that doing that would take ALL of their managers’ time and get furious if anyone suggested that. At one point, I went to work at an educational publishing house that had made its reputation selling grammar and composition textbooks. However, the house was experiencing dramatically declining revenues. I pointed out at a senior staff meeting that this was because most customers had switched to using Integrated Language Arts texts that combined literature and grammar and comp instruction in one series. They didn’t need the separate grammar and comp anymore. In other words, the company had a systemic problem that went to the heart of its business model. In response, the CEO, who had made his reputation by purchasing the grammar and comp program they were selling, screamed at me, literally screamed at me.
The systematic issues are harder. They require a lot more thought. But gun laws like those in Wisconsin are of far, far more import to the country than Kyle Rittenhouse is.
So, instead of addressing the systemic issue that it faced, that company went ahead and sank a lot of money into a revision of its grammar and comp program. Then, a couple years after that, the day came when every employee was called into the President’s office, one by one, and told that he or she was being let go. Near total collapse.
One can’t even get these matters considered in this forum, much less in the wider public one. Too complicated. Too boring.
So, I totally despair that the public at large will find out what’s wrong with the Wisconsin laws (and with such laws throughout the US) and the sickening ways in which they got to be as they are and will demand that they be changed. So, after all the blah, blah, blah about this trial, all that sound and fury will end up signifying nothing. Nothing will be fixed, and vigilantism by alt-right morons will escalate.
Bob, I did read your post and was struck by the craziness of the law. The statute is so confusing that it’s hard to wrap my head around it. Not being well versed in legalese, I thought I wouldn’t have anything to add with a reply. But I did appreciate the post and it did sink in that the way the laws are written are part of the problem.
Community by community…. state by state is how we will effect change. There is an uptick in pre-law majors…. let’s hope that’s a sign that there is a new generation aware of the changes that need to be made.
Thanks, Ginny!
There’s a name for the kind of thing I’m suggesting in the Quality Control world: root cause analysis. And there are lots of techniques for it, such as Failure Modes and Effects Analysis and Five Whys Analysis.
re: systemic problems:
Lack of healthy systems in schools can lead to what you alluded to – siloed departments, frustration – finger pointing…. and
“going along to get along” and not brining up the root cause of the problem because the new admins don’t want to understand.
If admin. makes a change they feel is systemic… it’s often not well thought out, or include input from multiple stakeholders. And it doesn’t last because…. wait 5 minutes and we have a new federal mandate to react to.
Yes. This is why I keep railing about the cost and the attendant devolution of curricula and pedagogy associated with the standards-and-testing regime. If you don’t address the systemic issues, nothing else works.
Some statues are weak.
Some are strong.
Depends on the statue and where it was made.
For example, this one, which was created in Italy, is pretty strong.
But I suspect that if it had been created in Wisconsin or Illinois (like Kyle) it would probably be weak, and hence require an AR.
Bob: Thanks for the response. The journalists you want to go through all this had better have a deep pocket. It would take time.
One place I would go would be the laws J Edgar Hoover tried to use on the Civil Rights movement. Seems like there used to be lots of laws that allowed the federal government to step in and stop the movement. I do not recall many of their moves, but they included the laws surrounding interstate commerce.
I really like your analogy with the publisher. Large systems are hard to change, especially if there are powerful people who benefit from the status quo.
A good example is the current switch from gas to electric. Gasoline powered cars continue to produce infrastructure in the private sector that can happen quickly. Gas’s stations pop up all the time. But a power paradigm shift is harder than initiating electric power stations the way we started building gas’s stations. The gas stations are already there, a better competitor so long as we ignore long term consequences. Hard to make a change.
The law is like that. I think the arcane Wisconsin laws probably went on the books when sawed-off shotguns were a thing of criminality. Thus the inane loophole allowing an assault rifle to be carried to a mass social gathering. I bet no one even thought about it in the meantime. Obviously, I do not know, but I would expect most states have not touched gun laws except to try recently to preemptively assure gun rights in the face of expected federal intervention. In this case, the legislatures were grandstanding, looking for issues to stir their base.
To expect a rational group of lawmakers to enact a rational set of laws is apparently a fond dream. Which oligarchy would you like?
I suspect that the Wisconsin firearms carry laws were hacked together by the National Rifle Association on request from some Wisconsin legislators belonging to the Troglodytes Party.
This kind of thing–writing a law that is intentionally totally convoluted and ineffectual, often results from the collusion of legislators and lobbyists.
Even more often from the cluster&#@% of legislators and lobbyists
yup
“The arcane Wisconsin laws probably went on the books when sawed-off shotguns were a thing of criminality.”
The laws in Arkansas are arkane.
The laws in Wisconsin are Wisconsinsane.
Incidentally, worst of all is when the legislators and lobbyists are colluding with the Russians.
Bob, Ginny here [bethree, not GregB or beachteach—too many b’s! 😉]
Just saying– I for one have been emphasizing something rotten in WI (& many other states) gun laws as my main take on this crime & trial since we started discussing it a few days ago. Proving shooter was not acting in self-defense, as you say, is tough to prove in most any state [& even tougher in WI and some others, see here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/11/17/wisconsin-self-defense-law-rittenhouse-522814 ]. If DA wants to get any conviction at all, best be damn good statutes behind gun offenses that will also be brought.
WI gun laws are indeed nutty & no doubt NRA lobby is behind open carry-anywhere-you-please, even if not also behind failure to align WI’s minor-carrying-gun laws. And imagine if KR had been 5 months older in Aug 2020: would any gun charges have applied at all?
YES, you have Ginny! My apologies!
Today, my life was forever changed when I learned that Critical Race Theory was released from a lab in Wuhan, China, under orders from Anthony Fauci and Xi Jinping.
LOL!
I thought we were selling them arms to shift the profits to Qanon. Citing the precedent of the North Doctrine.
Ollie Ollie in free! Ofc, North had his charges for violating the Boland Amendment reversed and vacated because law in America. It applies to ordinary schmucks, POC, and libtard snowflake Socialists.
And then he got a cush job heading the National Rifle Ass-ociation.
The role of Jewish space lasers in beaming down Critical Race Theory, after its release in Wuhan, into public school classrooms has yet to be investigated, but doubtless Greene and Boebert are on this.
My cats love their Jewish Space Laser.
Turns out high intensity Jewish space lasers are also effective against vigilantes with assault rifles — to vaporize them in their tracks.
And actually, so are readily available high intensity flashlights (eg, Maglites) that can quicky be flashed and temporarily blind an assailant in the dark at short distances.
Do I feel safer? No, of course not. Do, however, some people other than me feel safer? I have many questions. Do some people who feel threatened by BLM protesters feel safer? Did some people feel safer when leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were assassinated? Did the dogs and fire hoses make certain people feel safer? The lynchings? The death threats? The Stop and Frisk? The bombings? The mass shootings? The other mass murders? The pepper sprayings? The Vietnam War draft? The disfiguring nonlethal projectiles? The Stand Your Ground? The spitting on children trying to go to desegregated school? The mass incarceration? The three strikes and other minimum sentencing laws? The crack versus cocaine sentencing? Our laws and courts support the feelings of people in the system, hence a problem of systemic proportion. Did those acts of violence make people feel safer? Do they make people feel safer? Isn’t that really the underlying problem? Will I ever feel safe standing up for justice and equality? Will that stop me? Has it ever?
The Guardian, Nov. 27, 2021, “In the 1950’s, rather than integrate its public schools, Va. closed them.”
“A Trump associate said the former president is ‘pulling strings behind the scenes’ in 2022 GOP primaries, likened him to ‘The Godfather’s’ Vito Corleone”
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-pulling-strings-2022-republican-primary-elections-vito-corleone-conservatives-2021-11
UnKoch my country!
New book- “Free speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War”
And, in other news of the tragi-comic farce known as law in America, Merrick Garland continues to give Trump and his co-conspirators in a life of crime and treason the treatment that Acosta gave Epstein. No, I’ll take that back. Epstein was at least given a few days of the mandatory spa treatment that rich, powerful white men get when they are convicted of something. Trump and his clown car posse haven’t even received that. The Teflon Don 2.0. “I could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and. . . .” I could orchestrate a coup against the United States government while president and. . . .
The inscription over the entrance to the Supreme Court reads, “Equal Justice under Law.”
A joke.
A really, really bad joke. A mockery.
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
If you are poor in the Untied States [note the new spelling] and get fingered by the law, forget it. You are now a character in a novel co-written by Franz Kafka and the Marquis de Sade–the authors of what is now going to happen to you, ineluctably, inexorably.
When Hitler tried to carry out his Beer Hall Putsch, he too got the spa treatment for his crime. We know how that turned out, don’t we?
A few months ago, I rode my bicycle at twilight to my local Walgreens to pick up a prescription. On the way back, I rode on the empty sidewalks to avoid being killed by a driver. At one point, there was a skinny, white guy in jeans and a white T-shirt walking on the sidewalk in front of me, so I turned off onto the street. As I got near to the guy, he turned around and, holding it level with two hands, pointed a gun at me. “Sneak up on me,” he said. Of course this happened. Not only did this happen in America, where there are LITERALLY more firearms in private hands than there are people, but this was in Flor-uh-duh, where carrying a gun is required, it seems, if you have an IQ of under 80.
That is truly frightening! Someone acting like that was probably high as a kite too. Did you report him?
I decided that it would be a waste of time. I immediately put the foot to the pedal and as much distance as possible between me and him, all the while hoping that he wouldn’t take a shot at me. If I had called the police when I got home half an hour later, I would have been able to tell them, there was this white guy in jeans and a T-shirt. No, it was dark. I didn’t get a good look at him. No, I wasn’t about to run into him. And they would have said, “Well, thank you, Mr. Shepherd. Nothing we can do about this, of course.”
And “high as a kite?” Yeah, probably. Flor-uh-duh, like many backwaters in the United States, has a huge drug problem–oxys, fentanyl, heroin, meth. That problem, of course, is the ineffectual attempt to treat it as a criminal issue rather than as a public health issue. So, people go untreated, and the drug laws simply function as a job-creation program for criminal cartels.
Awful. Sorry that happened.
A number of years back, two drivers in Massachusetts got into an altercation during morning rush hour. They pulled off the road, and one of them took a crossbow from his car and killed the other with it. Shot him with a crossbow bolt.
Not exactly what one expects on the way to work in the morning, being killed with a crossbow.
But having your kid killed in the United States by some incel teenager stoked up on alt-right, neoNazi Youtube videos, using Dad’s legal military-grade weapon that can lay out 30 people in 2 minutes–well, this you have to worry about. It’s become a national pastime–you know, like baseball.
I Googled that and can’t find it anywhere.
That was supposed to be in response to the roofer/crossbow story.
Who’s on first?
Two years ago, I performed in a production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. One evening, I was helping the crew put up lights and do set construction. A fellow from the community was climbing a ladder in front of me, and I noticed that the ladder had not been properly steadied. I stepped forward to address this issue when THE GUN HE HAD STUCK INTO THE BACK OF HIS BLUE JEANS slipped out and fell to the floor.
But, ofc, I live in Flor-uh-duh, where morons carry guns around with them all the time. Around the same time that this incident occurred, two guys were working on a roof of a Flor-uh-duh home. One of them went back to his pickup truck to put his gun in the cab. He slipped on the gravel, his gun discharged, and his buddy on the roof was shot and killed.
I think that the incident with the roofers happened in Flor-uh-duh. It might have been elsewhere, but it was around the same time.
Of course, if you are going to work on a roof or brush your teeth or teach school or any of a myriad other tasks, it’s extremely important that you be armed. Just ask your state legislator or congressperson about this. He or she will explain why.
Because Freedumb. ‘murica.
That roofer who was killed was either extremely unlucky or (what is far more probable), it was not an accident.
What is the probability that a gun that just happened to discharge just happened to be pointing in one very specific direction out of all the possible directions when it did so?
Not very large, I can tell you that much.
And why did the fellow go back to get his gun in the first place?
Call me skeptical.
The story was that he was taking the gun back to his truck and slipped on the gravel and fell, resulting in the accidental discharge. Unlikely? Yes. Possible. I suppose.
On the other hand, I have worked on carpentry crews where people were “shot” with nail guns by accident.
Most of them have a safety mechanism where the nail comes out that has to first be depressed before the nail will shoot out, but it is still possible to get shot. For example, you could be holding a board which your partner is nailing without paying attention to where your hands are.
Always good to know who you are working with cuz there are some nitwits., To be sure.
The story actually sounds made up.
Really? What sounds false to you about the event at the theatre, SomeDAM? I reported here what happened.
And I have also worked with nitwits who purposefully retracted the safety mechanism and then shot out the nails.
More Darlose candidates.
Not the story at the theater.
The story that the roofer got shot accidentally.
I’d have to know a lot more details before I’d buy it.
SameDam Poet: It’s not made up. I googled it last night (not because I don’t trust Bob’s memory – but living in New England I did not remember it – b/c it was from…..1995!!
It’s frightning. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-11-10-9511110175-story.html
That long ago? OMG!
Oh, the crossbow story. Yeah, that one was a while back.
So, a roofer got shot with a crossbow when it accidentally discharged?
..during a production of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None?
lol
You were smart.
It is not wise (to put it mildly) to approach someone with a gun pointed at you — under any circumstance.
LOL. Nope. Darwin Award for that!
More aptly called the Darlose Award
There are no winners of the Darwin Award
An explanation for the level of leadership in the United States:
Did any of you watch the video? No one was acting right that night.
Anyone who agrees with this horribly written article did not watch the hundreds of hours of video of these shootings, did not watch the complete trial, never heard the testimony of the gunshot survivor himself who said “Rittenhouse did not shoot at me until I charged at him while pointing my gun at him.”
Rotten house is a little weasel who murdered two people and maimed a third one, using a gun that he was not old enough to buy. If he has a conscience, he will suffer the rest of his life. Too bad he’s not in prison.