In the news

I cannot understand how going to a different area from where you live, with an assault rifle is self-defenses.

He definitely displayed foolish judgement as you pointed out, but Wisconsin is a permissive open carry state, so any non-prohibited person >18 can carry an unconcealed firearm on their person in the vast majority of places and situations. That includes protests (which ≠ riots), and it includes any subjectively ‘dangerous’ places where one is legally entitled to be. The defence was 17 at the time, but the prosecution isn’t focusing on that.

The underlying legal notion is that no one has the right to use or threaten to use serious or deadly force against someone who isn’t a real immediate threat, unless they’re police (not being snide, literally different laws apply to them). If someone is attempting to use or is using serious or deadly force, like an adult swinging a skateboard in this case, and they’re not acting in self-defence, then they’re aggressors, and their victim has the right to defend themselves including with deadly force, which is why the state allows unregistered open carry.

As per the current facts of the case, he didn’t brandish the weapon at the men he shot, or threaten them causing them to reasonably fear for their lives. The defence has shown he was putting out fires and eventually he got into a verbal altercation that became racially inflamed (for clarity, iirc he yelled the N word), and then they attacked him, 3 vs 1, even chasing him down. The first man weaponised a skateboard, and he was shot; then another man forcibly tried to take the rifle (itself reasonably a deadly aggression given he’d just used it in self defence) and he was shot. Then the third man came at him with a drawn handgun, probably in a moment of fear/anger/confusion, and he was shot. The prosecution hasn’t shown, imo at least, that the defendant shot at someone he didn’t reasonably believe was an immediate deadly threat, like if the 3rd guy had just had his hands up.

Is it bizarre that he could just be carrying a gun? Hell yeah if you’re outside the US looking in, but afaik he didn’t start the physical fight, which is what the law cares about.

*It was the second man he shot who used a skateboard.

but afaik he didn’t start the physical fight,

?

for clarity, iirc he yelled the N word

!

Dunno what your going for but you’re making me wonder if I misread anything.

for clarity, iirc he yelled the N word
!

Again, dunno what you mean, but ‘fighting words’ and sufficient provocation are a thing. Is that a fighting word? I’d say very strongly yes, but is the provocation sufficient to chase him down and attack him, knowing he’s armed? Legally, that’s a harder sell.

Then the third man shot at him with a handgun

Erm no

It is a hugely offensive word to use, and could lead to escalating a situation that might otherwise have stayed fraught but peaceful or even diffused.

He didn't start the physical fight but if he'd not shouted might there have been a different outcome, I.e. no physical fight?

Then the third man shot at him with a handgun

Erm no

You’re correct, got mixed up by all the shots, have edited.

I think it’s one of the most vile, hateful, inflammatory insults anyone could utter. Don’t let the limitations of written word and my attempt at brevity give you any impression other than my utter condemnation of that word and its use.

He’s carrying a rifle and shouting that level of verbal abuse, but does that legally create sufficient provocation or reasonable fear imminent deadly threat for the recipient to attack him and try to take the rifle?

^I don’t know, the jury will decide. It’s a key fact in why it all went to shit, but attacking someone physically in the US is a pretty thick line to cross.

Snore. Stop trying to run rehab for this guy. He purposely went to a dangerous situation with an illegally held gun.

He can get bent, it’s not rehab, it’s just how I’m reading the case. He’s a stupid, racist kid whose actions led to people dying. The Atlantic’s news article linked earlier articulates this point very well.

Anyway, I didn’t post to defend the guy, just to try to help Skinny understand how self-defence is claimed here despite him stupidly going into the situation. Ultimately, my impression of the trial matters naught, it’s just the jury who matters.

What are you doing about it? The market seems to have already decided...

Loads of positive stuff is being done to fight car culture, and unsurprisingly alot of people on here are involved.

School streets across London are keeping kids safe from road death and toxic particulate emissions. Low traffic neighbourhoods are encouraging people out of cars. The railton road scheme, near where you used to drink, has brought a measurable reduction in overall motor traffic.

Safe segregated cycling infrastructure is being rolled out. More families now feel safer without a tank to take their kids to school.

The ULEZ is punishing the owners of high emission vehicles.

More High streets like Peckham rye and northcote road are being closed to private cars.

All this stuff is happening because people want it, and we know they want it because they talk about it, all the time, in public spaces like this forum, and vote for people to implement this stuff.

Maybe attacking SUVs and letting tyres down is tokenism. Personally it's heartening to know there are people across the country who have realised what a disaster the private motor vehicle is for society. SUVs are the loud, violent visible face of that disaster and anger in part drives our determination to bring about structural change.

The whole free market argument about cars will soon sound as nuts as it does when applied to cigarettes or burning coal. The market is wrong.

It's clearly a portrait of @skoota. Impeccable taste. :)

Good visual aid from New York Times about shooting in Kenosha

https://youtu.be/VpTW2AJE9MQ

An interesting obit.. The end of empire..

https://archive.md/MZy9A

I saw your tried reasoning, but i cannot get my head around it, though I appreciate the attempt, and slagging you off for sharing an opinion is wrong -the lack of congnitive discussion and debate is a cornerstone of the demise of the current world.

Edit: To be clear @Eseman I was not calling you dumb - in case you read it that way also. I appreciate your comment. And meant what I said on the lack of cognitive discussion of opposite views being a demise, so thanks.

I feel that as an outsider I can have a prepspctive that it is fucking lunacy, and people inside have been numbed to the second ammendment they think its okay.
Someone died because he went somewhere he didn't need to go with a gun, thinking he was some hero and want-to-be police/army loser. That is what he is, a loser an outcast and pathetic child. Just because someone punches you I don't think you should be able to shoot them, its not exactly proportional. As I learned growing up, two wrongs don't make a right and while I don't know many facts I highly doubt he was attacked for no reason. I am looking forward to reading the full facts when they come out after the trial ends.

In the UK, if you went somewhere with a hammer, and killed someone with it. That's pre-meditated murder.

If you (Americans) can't see what happened is lunacy then hope is lost.

I have heard of a recent UK trial where people went somewhere tooled up, got into a fight, stabbed someone and got away with it (not done for murder) as ‘self defence’.
The bar is high, even if you are a moron.

lol. youre first paragraph reads as such "i dont understand you, you must be dumb THIS IS WHATS WRONG WITH WORLD" only, politically worded lmfao.

also, If I carry a hammer jist to go and kill somone its pre meditated.
having a hammer in my toolkit and whacking someone stealing that toolkit would not be.
A trial would decide which I did.

like whats happening....

I dont agree with a lot of US gun laws but objectively some do make sense and open carry is a deterrent to not get to the point of using. Makes sense even if we dont like that they have the guns.

fwiw the first dude was at least manslaughter. Maybe self defense if he didnt run away. Its not pre meditated murder, he didnt want to kill him (trial to decide remember) but he ended uo doing so.
His aim got better during the night and the other two incidents are more self defense oriented, less shots, more immediate threat, handed himself in etc etc.

And please, dont veil youre disdain for an opinion with jargon and swearwords. I dont understand arabic or french or many laws of physics etc etc but that doesnt mean theyre not valid, sensible and widely shared.

This was an article I read on it a few months ago that seemed pretty good

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/05/kyle-rittenhouse-american-vigilante

Got a link, that's interesting as I didn't think it was so.

Cheers @aggi

More on Rittenhouse from video footage of the night: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-shooting-video.html

I’ll see what I can find, a friend was on the defence team (vague on purpose!).

No one involved was innocent. He is a sack of shit, but it's a bit odd that people draw the "unacceptable action" line at the point where he was defending himself. (It's literally on camera, not sure how people can't see that as being self-defence), and not at the point between verbal and physical. Isn't there footage of him running from Ziminski, who also has a gun in hand?
If you are in a mob of people chasing someone, that is aggressive behaviour, note that the video shows Ziminski fire a gun moments before the first person was shot.
Swinging a skateboard at someone on the floor? People get beaten to death with skateboards. They weigh more than a claw hammer.
/Shrugs America is a weird country.

Rittenhouse put himself in an active conflict zone, with a rifle.

Specifically he got his mother to drive him across state to another state to get to the conflict zone. With his rifle. That would suggest that he wanted to be involved in the conflict, or else why go to the considerable trouble of putting himself in the middle of it, and he decided that a rifle was a suitable item to have with him, which again suggests that he intended on finding and joining conflict that required the ability to present and/or dispense lethal force with ease.

He did indeed end up in a conflict, which the evidence suggests he sought out, and put himself in. It takes two to make a fight, but if Rittenhouse had stayed at home that night he'd not have killed those people.

This may work in terms of a self-defence argument in the US, where there's a nation wide cognitive dissonance with regards to firearms, said items being venerated in popular culture, seen as a vital part of being a "true" American, etc etc. But that doesn't mean that people outside America exposed to the same universal conditioning* and can see that it's bollocks.

I'm uncertain how that's "just happening to be there, with my hammer in my toolkit, which happened to be at hand in the unplanned altercation which I found myself embroiled in".

*(Similar to how the Poppy Day in the UK has become a month long, oppressive bit of Nationalist ancestor worship in praise of the glory of war that literally a handful of citizens experienced. We don't seem to see it, but it's plain to those outside the bubble).

Worth also pointing out that at least one of the people he killed was unarmed.

So were the teenagers that beat Danny Humble to death.

So were the teenagers that beat Danny Humble to death.

You forgot to make a relevant point.