"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
Holy shit, how many times have I said some version of that reference so many things. The 24 hour news cycle and infinite media has done an incredible amount of damage to our culture based purely on controversy = attention and attention = $$$.It. [the truth]
Would.
Get.
No.
Clicks.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
Without putting the kid on a pedestal, or knocking him off, (which is the reason why a lot of alleged historical "character" information, both good and bad, is excluded), I just want to see a verdict rendered on the merits.
We can all debate the wisdom of his being there, and whether he was in violation of state and local ordinances for his possession of the firearm under the circumstances of his being there...but at the end of the day, what matters is "were his actions justified given the level of threat encountered from the individuals who pursued and attacked him?"
I can find lots of things to not like about his being there and his "role playing"...but I will not deny his right to defend himself from those who sought to do grave bodily harm or worse.
I have a lawyer, rights question. I heard the DA wanted to add the possibility of new and lesser charges to the jury options. Is this legit? Naively, it seems to me that if you add new charges that negates the defense's ability to speak to the legal nuances of those charges. Might have you conducted your defense differently to include those possibilities?
It seems a ploy to get some kind of felony conviction on Rittenhouse (which is life disrupting) in any way you can.
My overall:
1. He is not guilty.
2. He was stupid to go there
3. The motive to defend society is understandable, might be crossed with some political views (so what, the law is what counts).
4. The fault is that government has failed to protect civil society through incompetence or political catering (I note that this can be found in both conservative and liberal governments throughout history who let their folks get away with violence). This leads to citizens arming up and leading to a tribal vs. justice society.
5. Don't dress like a clown and have a snarky, sneering intonation when you speak.
Aside - DA tried to show that video games make you a killer. Was he trying to say that Kyle was driven to violence by them? Or that his playing of them indicated a motivational intent to be a killer?
The connection between games and violence is tenuous at best from the literature. My alma mater did a online seminar on this and the presenter concluded that there is no direct link, any if at all is indirect. One finding that was interesting is that they gave small kids a don't touch a gun presentation, had them play a video game with no guns, sword or guns. Then the kids had access to find a gun (not loaded - no firing pin). The sword kids and gun kids touched the gun 50 to 60% of the time. No gun kids about 40%. The majority of all groups did not tell an adult, has instructed. This finding is not unknown, point being many little kids don't pay that much attention to lectures.
From what I've gathered here and other places, the first shooting seems to be the one that is the hardest to defend. I'm not saying it's indefensible, just less clear than "guy pointing gun at me" and "being beaten with skateboard". Does a hypothetical conviction on the first event put him in more legal jeopardy for the subsequent events?
Put another way, it's relatively easy to justify defending oneself with a gun when being hit in the head with a skateboard, but if the skateboard guy attacked you because you shot someone, are you considered to still have "started" that fight? Can you still claim self defense in that situation? I understand that laws vary, and there might not be a cut and dry answer, and ultimately, the jury decides anyway.
Just curious.
But they aren't individual distinct events. If the first shooting is unjustified, then, hypothetically, Kyle could reasonably appear to be a murderer who needs to be stopped and hitting him in the head with a skateboard or pointing a gun at him could be justified. Because our use of force laws are based on reasonableness (rather than being actually right), it's possible for two people to lawfully use force against each other. I think that's a pretty hard sell in this case since Kyle only used force when absolutely necessary and attempted to flee before using force. Those who chased him down could simply have not done so to avoid violence.
@Bio
Been wondering the same thing. We have an ugly murder trial in GA down in Brunswick where the defendents are arguing self defense also. I'm hearing a lot of analysis about how if you were committing an illegal assault then the victim resisted, you don't get to call self defense for killing him. Not a direct analogy to mis-guided Kyle because his offense if any for being there were not as severe to begin with. FWIW I thought early on Kyle had a decent SD argument but there's more about the law I don't know than a I do.
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