Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot 3 people, killing two, was acquitted yesterday by a jury in Kenosha Wisconsin. Taking almost 30 hours for deliberation, the jury showed careful diligence in arriving at its verdicts, yet those verdicts were not only unjust; they exposed the raw and tragic truth that when it comes to gun violence, our justice system can no longer actually deliver justice.
The killings and the resulting verdicts defy logic. An underaged teenager illegally possessing a firearm that was illegally bought by a straw purchaser crossed state lines to join an illegal police action by an unauthorized self-styled “militia”. He then left the group that was “guarding” businesses and wandered into the crowd that was protesting police brutality. Rittenhouse, displaying the maturity of a 17-year-old, walked into an angry crowd protesting a police shooting and was then shocked at those people’s reaction. Had he walked into the crowd without an AR-15 strapped to his chest, probably nothing would have happened; with an AR-15 he almost guaranteed to provoke a response, and he got it, in spades. Rittenhouse fired a number of shots, hitting three people and killing two of them. But for him toting an AR-15 in plain sight, this tragedy would not have happened.
Let’s go through the crimes committed by Rittenhouse and his compatriots. First, the straw purchase. Rittenhouse’s friend, Dominick Black, aged 20, bought the gun for him because he was too young. That purchase violates federal and state laws, and Black has been charged, but not tried. Second, Rittenhouse was charged with minor in possession, but just as final arguments began in his trial, the judge, citing a ridiculous reading of the statute, ordered the charge dropped. The technicality he cited? An inconsistency in the law that said minors can’t carry a weapon unless it has a long barrel. The defense had argued this technicality, and the judge bought it, effectively rendering the entire law toothless and unenforceable. The remaining charges were first degree reckless homicide, two counts of first degree recklessly endangering safety, first degree intentional homicide, and attempted first degree intentional homicide. The defense argument was simple – self-defense. They painted Rittenhouse as a good intentioned teenager who was attacked by vicious rioters while trying to protect property and provide medical aid. The judge, acting more like defense co-counsel rather than the trial judge, went along with this argument, banning the term “victim” or “victims” for those who were shot, but allowed them to be called “rioters”, “looters”, and “arsonists”.
But worse than the judge putting his foot on the scales of justice is the idiocy of today’s gun laws in most US states. Many states, like Texas, have undone two centuries of common-sense gun laws by perverting the meaning of the Second Amendment through decades of junk law that now permeates federal and state case law. Intended as a protection for the newly founded US government by providing for a citizen army made up of militias under state and local authority, the Second Amendment has been turned on its head from providing for the common defense to enabling any idiot to own and carry a gun in public. This effort, driven by gun manufacturers and their lobbyists, with a big assist from Antonin Scalia and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, is virtually complete. Just this year, Texas joined nineteen other states that eliminated all licensing requirements for the open carry of guns in public. It already allowed open carry of guns, but eliminated all licensing and training requirements, falsely calling such a radical practice as “constitutional carry,” which is nonsense. All but a handful of states now allow the open carry of firearms in some form or another. What could possibly go wrong?
Guns are now a fixture in political rallies and protests. This practice is almost exclusively on the right wing of the political spectrum where outrage is fueled by systemic disinformation which drives the outraged to show up in body armor, helmets, and toting loaded firearms. Guns and politics don’t mix, have never mixed, and will never mix, but now threats of physical violence and actual violence is commonplace during protests. Troublemakers often pose as legitimate protestors for the sole purpose of starting destruction and violence, like they did during the George Floyd protests of 2020. They then use the trouble they caused as an excuse to carry firearms to “protect” businesses and property, mostly owned by white people.
And now, after the Rittenhouse acquittals, we can’t put the genie back in the bottle. The lesson learned in this trial is that self-defense is a winning argument even when the person claiming self-defense actually started the incident. The fact is that, but for Rittenhouse wandering into a protest with a locked and loaded AR-15, no one would have died that night in Kenosha. HE provoked the protestors by openly carrying a weapon of war into a political protest that was already very tense. When people responded to his provocation, he then shot them, killing two, and then successfully defended that action in court by pretending that the incident began at the moment protestors responded to his provocation. We have a very similar argument going on right now in Georgia, where three white men chased, confronted, and threatened an unarmed black man, Ahmad Aubrey, who was simply jogging through a neighborhood. After pulling out a shotgun, one of the defendants then murdered Aubrey. Their legal justification? Self-defense. As ridiculous as that sounds, the trial is in Georgia, and the jury is made up of 11 white men. I have virtually no expectation that justice will be done in that case either, and I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut that the defense cites the Rittenhouse acquittals as precedent.
I quit the NRA in the 1980s when it went nuts and Charlton Heston started screaming, “From my cold dead hands!” at every meeting. Being a gun owner, I have been actively opposing for well over a decade the radical gun culture that permeates Texas. Our politicians have totally failed us, even failing to protect other Texans from gun nuts in the goddam state capitol, creating the necessity of installing panic buttons in every politician’s office to summon state troopers in the event a gun nut gets upset. Death threats against anyone that gun nuts don’t like is commonplace. Outrage from disinformation has created an alternative reality where up is down, left is right, the earth is flat, and the sun rises in the west. Gun nuts even bring guns to protests against science based public health policy. Career health officials are being driven from office by these threats, and now school board members and their families must be protected by police.
This is insanity that cannot be altered by reason, so I’m changing tactics. Tomorrow I’m trotting my happy ass down to Guns ‘r Us and buying myself a nice AR-15 with all the trimmings – a couple dozen boxes of ammo, a pile of 30 round mags, and body armor and a tactical sling. I’ll guarantee that if a couple hundred of us protesting for social justice, fair elections, and racial equality start showing up armed to the teeth, especially those with non-white skin, the politicians will change their tune in a hurry, calling for protection from “radical leftists”. Nothing else has worked, maybe this will. After all, we can’t depend on elected officials or even the courts to protect the common good; it’s time to use some of the same tactics as the other side to level the playing field.