The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse starts on Monday. At trial, it’s not just a teenager accused of killing two men during a chaotic night in Kenosha, but also the idea of a self-proclaimed authority to take up arms – essentially vigilance.
Rittenhouse was not a law enforcement agency. He was not a member of the military. He didn’t even live in Wisconsin, let alone in the city where civil unrest and protests took place after Jacob Blake’s police shooting.
Rittenhouse is charged with the murder of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber on August 25, 2020, and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz. He pleaded not guilty.
But before we hear the case of the prosecution or Rittenhouse’s claim of self-defense, let’s be clear about one thing: Rittenhouse was carries an assault rifle in a country that prohibits minors (Rittenhouse was 17 at the time) from carrying firearms in public, hunting exceptions. He said he went to Kenosha armed to protect businesses from robbers.
An acquittal would not only acquit Rittenhouse, but would set a legal precedent for other citizens to grab a gun and take the law into their own hands.
You start working fine and good luck getting that spirit back into the bottle a country with more weapons than people.
It’s really exciting to judge by video tape, law enforcement in Rittenhouse saw no threat. In fact, before the shooting, the cops gave him water as proof of their respect. And even after the shooting, though passersby yelled at nearby police officers about what had happened, Rittenhouse didn’t look like a threat. In fact, he left the scene quite calmly.
The irony is that the local police saw Blake – who he was shot seven times behind Officer Kenosha – in a similar way there would be no unrest in Kenosha at first.
But Blake, who was holding a knife as he tried to get back into his vehicle in broad daylight, was seen as a threat and treated as one. Rittenhouse, who patrolled the chaotic streets at night with assault weapons, was not.
In August, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that prosecutors had footage of Rittenhouse sitting in a car in front of CVS and saying he wished he had his assault rifle so he could shoot at men leaving the store.
The district attorney said in court documents that the video “proves that the defendant made a fervent effort as an armed observer to get involved in situations that had nothing to do with him. Finally, perhaps most importantly, the video proves that the defendant was willing and willing to use lethal force in a situation where it was completely unjustified.
According to authorities, Rittenhouse’s friend Dominick Black, allegedly bought a semi-automatic rifle for Rittenhouse because Rittenhouse was still a minor. Black supposedly asked Rittenhouse to join him in his crusade to protect local businesses.
But what does law and order seem like? It’s more like a scene from one of “The Purge” movies, dystopian horror movies where every crime, including murder, becomes legal once a year.
Rittenhouse and his friend believed they had the unbridled power to become an executor, resulting in more fatalities in the shooting. The decision that this is not a crime would say more about our future than it does about Rittenhouse.