Kyle Rittennhouse is...

PS I want to hear what you think, not what you think the jury will decide.

@freemo for me I think it’s kinda sus he just went into the chaos when it wasn’t even in his city. I am not really sure what happened but if there were no direct threat to him then yeah he is guilty. Again I want to précise I am really uninformed on this thing. But yeah, don’t go play the though guys or the cops and go in a dangerous place should be a common sense rule. You’re not equipped nor formed to deal with it (cops should be formed more, but that’s another story), this isn’t cod

@louisrcouture Some would say its suspect that he walked into a dangerous area with the intent of providing first aide and protecting people... I say its what redeems him.

As for a direct threat to him. He didnt shoot at first. A mob started to chase him screaming things about killing him and beating him up, he ran and didnt shoot back instead screaming "friendly friendly friendly" as objects were thrown at him by people chasing him. At every point he only shoots once he has been cornered and is within arms reach of physical assault. Even then one shot and ran, he didnt just start shooting a crowd or anything. At one point a gun was even held to his face showing the crowd was also at least partly armed.

Its a very clear case of self-defense IMO.

@louisrcouture it helps to also hear the testimony to fill in the details mind you. But I think the bulk of it is clear enough on the video.

@louisrcouture there seem to be a few videos on that link. Which one do you wnat me to watch and at what time-point should i pay attention for whatever relevant detail you are trying to share?

@louisrcouture I think i am clearly missing whatever your trying to highlight. The middle one is simply him interacting with police who praised him for being there and giving him some water. It doesnt even have any violence in it or protesters.

@freemo the police tells him to stay away, that he is a civilian etc, he’s trying to confront them then we hear a gunshot

@louisrcouture They arent telling him to disperse, you can clearly hear the difference between the cop in the distance (addressing a crowd out of camera) telling them to disperse, and the cops that address him which are much clearer, louder and closer. When they are addressing him the cop says "We appreciate you guys, we really do". In fact the argument in court is that the police actually deputized him by explicitly condoning them. They were **not** telling them to disperse.

Likewise the gunshot you heard was in the distance.

You can read more about it at the link below here is a quote:

"Police in Wisconsin "deputized" armed vigilantes during protests against police violence last year, including Kyle Rittenhouse..."

and later int he article (naming a victim from the shooting by name):

In the suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, who was shot in his right arm by Rittenhouse, alleges that Kenosha officials enabled a "band of white nationalist vigilantes" during a protest in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020.

nbcnews.com/news/us-news/wisco

@freemo
Speaks for itself
People who arrested dont say they pointed their gun at people sarcastically

In the video, a man wearing yellow pants tells Rittenhouse that the teenager had just pointed a gun at him for standing on a vehicle. Rittenhouse responds in the video, "Yeah I did."
In court, he testified that he had not actually pointed his weapon at the man and said his admission on video was "sarcasm."

cnn.com/2021/11/10/us/kyle-rit

@louisrcouture clicked the link, I dont see the video you are talking about. Where is the video?

Was the person whom he supposidly pointed the gun at one of the people shot or is he unrelated to the case at all?

@louisrcouture For that matter was the car he was standing on his own property? Destruction of property (such as standing on someones car with the intent to damage it) is a perfectly acceptable reason to aim a gun at someone anyway. If you are actively destroying someones property you foreit your rights, you get a gun pointed at you and if you dont stop you might even get shot... Moral of the story, dont destroy property that isnt yours intentionally, if you do expect it to be defended.

@freemo and I feel like this is where we disagree.

Yes destroying someone property is wrong, but it’s not a reason to kill someone’s.

It should have been the role of the court to prosecute the guy who destroyed cars. This is more like an extrajudicial killing.

@louisrcouture I think that if someone is destroying property they should get a warning (and was) and if they dont comply shooting is fine.

Again though, was the person he aimed the gun at actually one of the people he shot or was involved int he incident? At worse even if i take your interpretation it was just some unrelated dude he interacted with earlier in the night and is unrelated to the events that unfolded anyway.

The reason i am perfectly ok with someone who is intentionally causing property damage, after being warned, being shot is because in the end the vast majority of criminals get away. I see no reason a victim should have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in damage simply to protect the life of someone engaging in illegal activity. Particularly when such people will almost always get away, so relying on cops or courts means you will almost certainly never see justice.

Moreover even if the courts do handle it often times the people are too poor to pay the cost of the damage they do so the owner is still left with tens of thousands of dollars out of his pocket. That said one would expect if you do shoot such a person that you arent aiming to kill.

All this is moot though because, again, you are talking about a person that never was actually shot by kyle nor had any involvement with the incident anyway.

@freemo @louisrcouture
Why did you move to the Netherlands if these are your views? No gun ownership here, absolutely no open carry. Had this happened in the Netherlands he would be incredibly guilty, no question.

And if you really want to kill someone that damages your car, please move back to the USA...

@frank87 @louisrcouture @freemo
That doesn't mention property though, only yourself or someone else's safety from (sexual or physical) assault. And it's very clear on proportionality. The defence should be proportional to the attack.

I remember well publicized cases of shoplifters getting punched and burglars beaten with a baseball bat that were under heavy discussion. Very different from getting shot with a automatic rifle in a public space.

@kingannoy

I wont claim to know or interprit dutch law. I will say that shooting without the intent to kill, particularly if warned first, is a perfectly proportional response to intentional property damage.

Stomping on a car can easily cause 10K+ worth of damage. With dutch health insurance a shot to the leg might cost 1/10th of that. Likewise stomping on a car could lead to all sorts of collateral damage, including that car exploding, so the person is defending, indirectly, against potential safety risks just as the person being shot has a risk of having permanent injury.

So yea, seems proportional to me.

@frank87 @louisrcouture

@freemo @frank87 @louisrcouture
You need to stop believing Hollywood movies.

Any gunshot is potentially lethal and will scar (physically and mentally) and potentially disable you if it isn't. If you think only the hospital costs are what needs to be accounted for you are very wrong.

And if you think you can make a car explode by stomping on it...

@kingannoy @freemo @frank87 I think something that isn’t mentioned in this debate is how rare are the scenarios of « someone is trying to destroy my car » versus how often are guns related incident such as school shootings, suicides, gun violences etc.

Like is one broken car (that we could collectively have repaid through government and taxes) worse than hundreds of lives that are lost because of laxist gun control laws. (That cannot be brought back)

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@louisrcouture

Guns used for protecting life and property are the overwhelming majority of incidents and school shootings and mass shootings in general are a very small percentage relative to that.

As for suicides, I leave that out. A person has a right in my mind to commit suicide and a person commiting suicide with a gun or anything else is their right to do, so in no way would I ever include that in the figures. In fact I'd go so far to say if someone wants to commit suicide they have a right to do so by whatever means they feel is best for then.

Some numbers:

percentage of times a gun is used as defense vs homicide is a whopping 81%

Percentage of people killed by guns in mass shootings (that is defined as 3 or more people so a very loose definition of mass shooting)... <1%

@kingannoy @frank87

@louisrcouture

All figures are from the CDC, gun violence archive, 2016-1018. You will have to download the data directly if you want to verify.

If you want sources on how restriction in gun laws consistently result in increase in violence in the years that follow I can get that for you again. I have posted those figures multiple times on my thread so I'd have to dig it up.

@kingannoy @frank87

@freemo @louisrcouture @kingannoy @frank87 what percentage of these crimes and cases of self-defense wouldn't have guns involved at all if they had become rare, like in the Netherlands?

"If only criminals had guns" it'd be 100% violent crimes. But that doesn't mean it's worse. Because if the total is less than the value 19% here, you'd be better off anyway.. (that's ignoring that the cops may also go into the pie chart)

@freemo @louisrcouture @kingannoy @frank87

ugh finding good plots online fucking sucks.(and then we're not even interpreting what the numbers represent)

Also think it's a bit monomaniacal looking at these particular statistics at countries and when they put in this kind of legislation, while in fact lots of things were happening.

1: that's around the time the troubles in Ireland started. Probably the confiscation relates to that.
2. (ireland again) dunno about Jamaica

(1/2)

@freemo @louisrcouture @kingannoy @frank87
3. Dunno, does the graph show a connection? Also this graph ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationand shows quite a decline after. (though i can't quite match them)
4. This is as-a-fraction of violent crime. Here is one illinoisnewsroom.org/by-the-nu ... not a clear change looking at a similar time range, overall. (2/2)

@jasper

The problem with arguing "the legislation was put into place because its when trouble started" is that the point of legilsation is a pivot point. We dont see the trouble rising and then the legislation happens and it continues to rise. In most cases we see it rising slowly or being flat line, legilsation kicks in, and after the grace period (usually a year or two) the rate of violence suddenly and significantly spikes never to return.

As for your other comments, that largely has to do with how statisticians handle granger causality. AS a general rule we care about the immediate years following, usually the grace period + a few years. Once you go too far into the future you are no longer looking at granger causality but rather correlation as other factors begin to become dominant. Even then though if you do you will almost always find the numbers never or rarely falls below pre-law baseline.

@louisrcouture @kingannoy @frank87

@freemo @frank87 @louisrcouture @kingannoy i realized i was responding to a particular point..

That said, i feel like you're dumping a lot of things on me to "win" the argument... I'm not interested in that.

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