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Vigilantes versus the police
The 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.
no subject
I am sure you know that he went there not to "kill protestors", but help his friends to protect their property.
He was assaulted by, I'd say, criminals, and acted in self-defense.
Crossing state borders is not illegal in the USA either; even illegally crossing US borders is often viewed as a small thing. Remember a guy who crossed the border illegally, then picked up a gun and killed a woman in SF? And? It was not even a self-defense.
no subject
Also, the people who assaulted him had not engaged in any criminal behavior until they assaulted him. They were not criminals until that point. They were people wandering around outside. Possibly as part of a protest, possibly just as a group of people seeking trouble. Their true intentions are probably not possible to nail down at this point. But they clearly didn't like the armed posse standing around waiting for them.
I'm aware that the jury decided he acted in self-defense. But he still put himself in that situation, with a deadly firearm, because he wanted to defend some parked cars from Some Bad Guys. And now two people are dead by his hand. Find me the angle here where he isn't a piece of shit for doing that.
no subject
"Rosenbaum said he was molested by a stepfather and had spent most of his adult life in prison starting at age 18 for sexual conduct with five preteen boys."
"Huber had spent time in prison twice, first for violating probation after strangling his brother and again for kicking his sister, the Post reported."
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/20/1057571558/what-we-know-3-men-kyle-rittenhouse-victims-rosenbaum-huber-grosskreutz
Regarding putting himself in the situation, this reminds me all those talks about "her skirt was too short", "she should not have walked that late in that street", etc. "Reclaim the night" was a movement many years ago, in the UK, that was trying to fix this problem of basic human rights (as I understand them).
no subject
I think the choice to walk out on the town wearing a short skirt, and the choice to walk into an angry crowd with a loaded AR-15, are not the same. Call me old-fashioned.
no subject
I'd never say that. I'm against the death penalty.
But you know, having some vigilanti experience from the Soviet days, I may be a little bit either more subjective or more experienced with this kind of activity. I would not delegate everything to the police, although it's their job. They are corrupt, first of all.
no subject
no subject
It is risky, yes, very risky. So risky that I would not do it. That's pretty much all we can say about the stupidity of the choice to put one self in a situation like that.
As long as you happen to stay within the law, that's all we can object to it, too, because stupidity is not a crime. And you need a lot of luck to have the jury untangle stupidity from crime.