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Vigilantes versus the police
Jan. 10th, 2022 04:17 pmThe Kenosha shooting was the inevitable result after decades of the NRA’s twisted self-defense rhetoric:
There's legally defensible, and there's morally defensible. I'm comfortable saying that his actions are one but not the other.
I can see why people might think that having semi-random people drive in from surrounding areas with firearms is the proper response to the threat of a protest turning violent. I don't see it that way.
Standing on your property and waving a gun around will probably prevent your property from being damaged in a protest that turns into a riot. Probably. Go ahead and do that if you think it's the right thing to do. But bear in mind that the police should not be doing that for you. What vigilantes do is not what the police would, or should do, and in fact it usually works at cross-purposes. As such, vigilantes justifying what they do by claiming that the police are not doing their duty is deeply ironic.
I've been in the thick of multiple protests in and around Oakland that were varying degrees of violent and varying degrees of contained, and by far the most successful response I've seen has been from trained riot response teams using non-lethal crowd control equipment and tactics that are definitely not part of the standard police playbook. Oakland has learned a few things over the decades.
For example, it's become abundantly clear that killing protestors - even violent agitators using the protests as cover - backfires dramatically and results in far more violence and property damage than it prevents. As was the case with Rittenhouse. He wasn't an idiot for showing up in Kenosha. But he was absolutely an idiot for bringing a rifle there, and then inserting himself deliberately into a situation where he would feel the need to use it to defend himself. That makes him more than an idiot in my book -- that makes him, pardon my French, a piece of shit. Two people are dead because he wanted to play hero defending some parked cars. The cops weren't standing around with rifles, you say? Gee, I wonder why they weren't doing that. I guess they just don't value parked cars the way they should.
Vigilantes use "lack of policing" as an excuse for stupidity. Same way violent criminals use protests as cover. Two stupidities do not cancel. That's not how stupidity works.
"On November 19, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges he faced after shooting three people, two fatally, during the 2020 protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. An Illinois resident and 17 years old at the time, Rittenhouse crossed state lines and armed himself with an AR-15, supposedly to protect the city from protesters in the aftermath of the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake. Rittenhouse claimed self-defense and was acquitted after the jury deliberated for more than 25 hours."
There's legally defensible, and there's morally defensible. I'm comfortable saying that his actions are one but not the other.
I can see why people might think that having semi-random people drive in from surrounding areas with firearms is the proper response to the threat of a protest turning violent. I don't see it that way.
Standing on your property and waving a gun around will probably prevent your property from being damaged in a protest that turns into a riot. Probably. Go ahead and do that if you think it's the right thing to do. But bear in mind that the police should not be doing that for you. What vigilantes do is not what the police would, or should do, and in fact it usually works at cross-purposes. As such, vigilantes justifying what they do by claiming that the police are not doing their duty is deeply ironic.
I've been in the thick of multiple protests in and around Oakland that were varying degrees of violent and varying degrees of contained, and by far the most successful response I've seen has been from trained riot response teams using non-lethal crowd control equipment and tactics that are definitely not part of the standard police playbook. Oakland has learned a few things over the decades.For example, it's become abundantly clear that killing protestors - even violent agitators using the protests as cover - backfires dramatically and results in far more violence and property damage than it prevents. As was the case with Rittenhouse. He wasn't an idiot for showing up in Kenosha. But he was absolutely an idiot for bringing a rifle there, and then inserting himself deliberately into a situation where he would feel the need to use it to defend himself. That makes him more than an idiot in my book -- that makes him, pardon my French, a piece of shit. Two people are dead because he wanted to play hero defending some parked cars. The cops weren't standing around with rifles, you say? Gee, I wonder why they weren't doing that. I guess they just don't value parked cars the way they should.
Vigilantes use "lack of policing" as an excuse for stupidity. Same way violent criminals use protests as cover. Two stupidities do not cancel. That's not how stupidity works.
