8 ms·

This case is so weird from a european pov. Rittenhouse would be certainly convicted of murder in countries like germany. The self-defense argument would get you

by siva7 5y ago

This case is so weird from a european pov. Rittenhouse would be certainly convicted of murder in countries like germany. The self-defense argument would get you some laughs at the trial.

Benjammer 5y ago
Are you not allowed to shoot someone in Germany if they fire a gun into the air and then point it at you? What about if someone is swinging a blunt object violently at your head? Is there just not such a thing as "self defense" in Germany? I feel like I sound like one of the right wing sympathizers but I'm honestly just curious how things work over there, are you willing to explain?
- siva7 5y ago
  Not so if the shot down people can also make the case that they feared for their lives because you were carrying a weapon and that is why they pointed a weapon at you in the first place. There is a good reason why only highly trained government forces are allowed to carry a weapon let alone some teenager.
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    > Not so if the shot down people can also make the case that they feared for their lives Can you cite the specific German statute or case history that says this? Or is it just what you intuitively expect to be true? > There is a good reason why only highly trained government forces are allowed to carry a weapon let alone some teenager. For what it's worth, I wish that were the case in the US too. But whether carrying a gun is illegal is a different question from whether using it in this specific situation makes you also guilty of the additional crime of murder.
    - Zickzack 5y ago
      If you can read German, then search for the term Putativnotwehr - or Erlaubnistatbestandsirrtum which looks so much more German. It refers to an understandable, but wrong belief to be in a situation that justifies self defense. It is a valid excuse in penal law, yet it does not apply to civil liabilities. You can still be sued for damages. An official prosecutor told me that you can use it once in your life to beat somebody up. After that, they will not believe you anymore. However, I completely agree that it does not make sense to judge the Rittenhouse case by German law.
      - School-Cotton 5y ago
        Thanks!
- SquishyPanda23 5y ago
  You can't shoot someone in the US for swinging something at your head. Otherwise all bar fights would end in gun violence like in a cheesy Western film.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    > You can't shoot someone in the US for swinging something at your head. In every state of which I’ve ever been a resident, responding with lethal force in such a case is in fact legal.
    - stjohnswarts 5y ago
      If that something is a deadly weapon sure. If it's fisticuffs and shoving then no it's not unless someone has you on the ground and is pounding away with no sign of letting up. I would say you would need to be beat half to death though or the jury is going to laugh at you.
      - horns4lyfe 5y ago
        This whole comment shows that you really don’t understand physical violence/haven’t been involved in it. One punch can easily cause physical damage that can ruin lives. One hard shove can crack someone’s head on a concrete curb. These are all things I’ve seen happen. The idea that you could be “beaten half to death” and then have the presence of mind to decide that it’s ok to defend yourself with a weapon is equally absurd.
      - blindmute 5y ago
        This is simply false in most states. In short, you can shoot someone dead if you "reasonably believes such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or bodily harm to himself / herself or another". This does in fact include a guy punching you or trying to punch you.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago
spurgu 5y ago
Meh. Not if you take into account the US constitution and the right to self-defence and bear arms (which makes sense if you think about it). You can't really compare to a European country where you'd get prosecuted simply for carrying a firearm.
School-Cotton 5y ago
The German definition of self-defense (“Notwehr”) sounds quite comprehensive to me: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__32.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__32.html What makes you think the case would’ve been adjudicated differently in Germany? Edit: to be clear, certainly bringing a gun to a protest at all is illegal in Germany, so he could presumably be prosecuted for that, but it's not at all clear why he'd have been guilty of murder.
- Nursie 5y ago
  In the UK, aside from guns being highly regulated, taking the gun to a protest would be taken as a sign of intent to use it and the rest of the events would be interpreted in that light. Of course in the UK he'd be looking at multiple years in prison just for the gun offence, and it's also less likely someone else would be waving a gun around in his direction.
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    I'm no expert on law, but it seems likely that in a country where publicly carrying a gun at all is illegal, that both Grosskreutz and Rittenhouse would have been able to legitimately claim self-defense had they shot and killed the other, because either could have reasonably assumed (even if incorrectly) that the other was some sort of terrorist or mass shooter.
    - Nursie 5y ago
      I don't think so. I think the fact that they had taken a gun along to an event like this in the first place would be taken as pre-meditation, regardless of whether they believed themselves to be in immediate mortal danger when they actually fired the shot. Although perhaps it would be enough to get it downgraded to manslaughter. I'd love to hear from a lawyer on this TBH.
      - School-Cotton 5y ago
        > I'd love to hear from a lawyer on this TBH. Me too! I'm not at all sure I'm right -- but then again, neither are (or should be) the people with hot takes shot from the hip about how obviously he would have been found guilty of murder in enlightened Europe. Thanks for the interesting discussion.
GhettoComputers 5y ago
Would anyone laugh at anyone attacking someone with a semi automatic gun with a skateboard?
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Well the laws are different here. The jury decided what they thought given the laws of the state, not what they wanted to rule. That's the way jury trials work. It's not a morality trial, it's a "did he break the law" trial
dudul 5y ago
So if you get assaulted in Germany you're supposed to just let them beat you up without making a move? Aren't there any acceptable scenarios were lethal self defense can be applied?
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  I'm not european, but I'm not American either, and the case is weird. In isolation the outcome is correct but take a step back and do you not see what is happening to your country? Weird is an understatement. The entire set and setting for it shouldn't be happening in the first place. But it is.
  - horns4lyfe 5y ago
    Well yes, people shouldn’t have been allowed to burn down a city, loot, and commit violent acts for days on end. Of course that’s weird, this case is really just a small part of it.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    I am european, but no longer living in Europe (or America) and I can't help but agree. Kyle Rittenhouse isn't guilty of murder under US law, and the killings have been determined to be self defence. OK then. But you have a young person being driven to a counter-protest by a parent, picking up a firearm on the way, ostensibly to use the threat of deadly force to help prevent property damage to some businesses as part of some sort of vigilante militia. There is just so much wrong with this picture before we even get to the (inevitable IMHO) tragedy.
    - horns4lyfe 5y ago
      Why is that what’s wrong with the picture, and not the larger issue that rioters were allowed to burn parts of a city to the ground for days? This case is also far from the only violence that took place there.
    - jaybrendansmith 5y ago
      Indeed. My point of view is as a parent of a 16-year old myself. Kyle's parent needs to be locked up here. She's the guilty party, as the supposed guardian of this child. Kyle, defending himself in that bizarro situation, and given current law in that state, was innocent. But there's no world in which a parent should allow that situation to EVER occur. If we dropped a bunch of armed teenagers in the middle of a riot, we should expect mayhem and death, no matter what their individual politics are. We have a serious problem in this country and it isn't Kyle Rittenhouse.
inputvolch 5y ago
This case is also weird if you reimagine all of the participants as penguins in Antarctica. Since that didn't happen, it would be a waste of time to speculate what would happen in a completely different scenario.
SquishyPanda23 5y ago
The US has a long history of letting murderers off the hook when there is a racial component[0]. With someone like Rittenhouse, who has become a darling of the white supremacy movement, the trial is part of an ongoing culture war. And culture warriors are going to do what they always do. [0] See, for example, the use of jury nullification after the US Civil War.
- hasdf 5y ago
  If a hispanic guy being aquitted for defending himself from three white attackers is your best example of white supremacy in action and your reference is from the civil war - maybe take a deep breath and realize the country isn't doing as bad as your peers at facebook claim
  - Rebelgecko 5y ago
    Don't forget that one of the attackers had been screaming racial slurs all night...
  - SquishyPanda23 5y ago
    I'm sorry I've hurt your feelings.
- HNTA_1 5y ago
  >The US has a long history of letting murderers off the hook when there is a racial component. Luckily that wasn't the case here so your comment is immaterial, a straw man.
  - SquishyPanda23 5y ago
    I'm sorry I've hurt your feelings.
rayiner 5y ago
As far as I can tell that’s not because of a real difference in self defense law, but because of a difference in gun laws. But the gun laws in America are what they are. Many people at this riot were armed: https://vimeo.com/461063053 https://vimeo.com/461063053. Listen to all the gun fire at the end of the video. Judging Rittenhouse as if he was in Germany makes no sense. Watch the video—this wasn’t Germany, it was Iraq. In Germany, the police would never have allowed armed rioters to burn down multiple city blocks over two days.
robbedpeter 5y ago
I'm pretty sure German law would find Rittenhouse acted in self defense, given the facts of the case. The people he killed were attacking him with weapons, one had threatened to kill him, he had a gun pointed at him, he was in reasonable fear for his own life, and he attempted to retreat before resorting to his gun. Remove all the media hoopla and it's not even a little bit unclear - put most people in that situation and they'd find it reasonable to use deadly force to defend yourself.

by siva7 5y ago

This case is so weird from a european pov. Rittenhouse would be certainly convicted of murder in countries like germany. The self-defense argument would get you some laughs at the trial.

Benjammer 5y ago

Are you not allowed to shoot someone in Germany if they fire a gun into the air and then point it at you? What about if someone is swinging a blunt object violently at your head? Is there just not such a thing as "self defense" in Germany? I feel like I sound like one of the right wing sympathizers but I'm honestly just curious how things work over there, are you willing to explain?

siva7 5y ago
Not so if the shot down people can also make the case that they feared for their lives because you were carrying a weapon and that is why they pointed a weapon at you in the first place. There is a good reason why only highly trained government forces are allowed to carry a weapon let alone some teenager.
- School-Cotton 5y ago
  > Not so if the shot down people can also make the case that they feared for their lives Can you cite the specific German statute or case history that says this? Or is it just what you intuitively expect to be true? > There is a good reason why only highly trained government forces are allowed to carry a weapon let alone some teenager. For what it's worth, I wish that were the case in the US too. But whether carrying a gun is illegal is a different question from whether using it in this specific situation makes you also guilty of the additional crime of murder.
  - Zickzack 5y ago
    If you can read German, then search for the term Putativnotwehr - or Erlaubnistatbestandsirrtum which looks so much more German. It refers to an understandable, but wrong belief to be in a situation that justifies self defense. It is a valid excuse in penal law, yet it does not apply to civil liabilities. You can still be sued for damages. An official prosecutor told me that you can use it once in your life to beat somebody up. After that, they will not believe you anymore. However, I completely agree that it does not make sense to judge the Rittenhouse case by German law.
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      Thanks!
SquishyPanda23 5y ago
You can't shoot someone in the US for swinging something at your head. Otherwise all bar fights would end in gun violence like in a cheesy Western film.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  > You can't shoot someone in the US for swinging something at your head. In every state of which I’ve ever been a resident, responding with lethal force in such a case is in fact legal.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    If that something is a deadly weapon sure. If it's fisticuffs and shoving then no it's not unless someone has you on the ground and is pounding away with no sign of letting up. I would say you would need to be beat half to death though or the jury is going to laugh at you.
    - horns4lyfe 5y ago
      This whole comment shows that you really don’t understand physical violence/haven’t been involved in it. One punch can easily cause physical damage that can ruin lives. One hard shove can crack someone’s head on a concrete curb. These are all things I’ve seen happen. The idea that you could be “beaten half to death” and then have the presence of mind to decide that it’s ok to defend yourself with a weapon is equally absurd.
    - blindmute 5y ago
      This is simply false in most states. In short, you can shoot someone dead if you "reasonably believes such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or bodily harm to himself / herself or another". This does in fact include a guy punching you or trying to punch you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 5y ago

spurgu 5y ago

Meh. Not if you take into account the US constitution and the right to self-defence and bear arms (which makes sense if you think about it). You can't really compare to a European country where you'd get prosecuted simply for carrying a firearm.

School-Cotton 5y ago

The German definition of self-defense (“Notwehr”) sounds quite comprehensive to me: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__32.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__32.html What makes you think the case would’ve been adjudicated differently in Germany? Edit: to be clear, certainly bringing a gun to a protest at all is illegal in Germany, so he could presumably be prosecuted for that, but it's not at all clear why he'd have been guilty of murder.

Nursie 5y ago
In the UK, aside from guns being highly regulated, taking the gun to a protest would be taken as a sign of intent to use it and the rest of the events would be interpreted in that light. Of course in the UK he'd be looking at multiple years in prison just for the gun offence, and it's also less likely someone else would be waving a gun around in his direction.
- School-Cotton 5y ago
  I'm no expert on law, but it seems likely that in a country where publicly carrying a gun at all is illegal, that both Grosskreutz and Rittenhouse would have been able to legitimately claim self-defense had they shot and killed the other, because either could have reasonably assumed (even if incorrectly) that the other was some sort of terrorist or mass shooter.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    I don't think so. I think the fact that they had taken a gun along to an event like this in the first place would be taken as pre-meditation, regardless of whether they believed themselves to be in immediate mortal danger when they actually fired the shot. Although perhaps it would be enough to get it downgraded to manslaughter. I'd love to hear from a lawyer on this TBH.
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      > I'd love to hear from a lawyer on this TBH. Me too! I'm not at all sure I'm right -- but then again, neither are (or should be) the people with hot takes shot from the hip about how obviously he would have been found guilty of murder in enlightened Europe. Thanks for the interesting discussion.

GhettoComputers 5y ago

Would anyone laugh at anyone attacking someone with a semi automatic gun with a skateboard?

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Well the laws are different here. The jury decided what they thought given the laws of the state, not what they wanted to rule. That's the way jury trials work. It's not a morality trial, it's a "did he break the law" trial

dudul 5y ago

So if you get assaulted in Germany you're supposed to just let them beat you up without making a move? Aren't there any acceptable scenarios were lethal self defense can be applied?

monkeybutton 5y ago
I'm not european, but I'm not American either, and the case is weird. In isolation the outcome is correct but take a step back and do you not see what is happening to your country? Weird is an understatement. The entire set and setting for it shouldn't be happening in the first place. But it is.
- horns4lyfe 5y ago
  Well yes, people shouldn’t have been allowed to burn down a city, loot, and commit violent acts for days on end. Of course that’s weird, this case is really just a small part of it.
- Nursie 5y ago
  I am european, but no longer living in Europe (or America) and I can't help but agree. Kyle Rittenhouse isn't guilty of murder under US law, and the killings have been determined to be self defence. OK then. But you have a young person being driven to a counter-protest by a parent, picking up a firearm on the way, ostensibly to use the threat of deadly force to help prevent property damage to some businesses as part of some sort of vigilante militia. There is just so much wrong with this picture before we even get to the (inevitable IMHO) tragedy.
  - horns4lyfe 5y ago
    Why is that what’s wrong with the picture, and not the larger issue that rioters were allowed to burn parts of a city to the ground for days? This case is also far from the only violence that took place there.
  - jaybrendansmith 5y ago
    Indeed. My point of view is as a parent of a 16-year old myself. Kyle's parent needs to be locked up here. She's the guilty party, as the supposed guardian of this child. Kyle, defending himself in that bizarro situation, and given current law in that state, was innocent. But there's no world in which a parent should allow that situation to EVER occur. If we dropped a bunch of armed teenagers in the middle of a riot, we should expect mayhem and death, no matter what their individual politics are. We have a serious problem in this country and it isn't Kyle Rittenhouse.

inputvolch 5y ago

This case is also weird if you reimagine all of the participants as penguins in Antarctica. Since that didn't happen, it would be a waste of time to speculate what would happen in a completely different scenario.

SquishyPanda23 5y ago

The US has a long history of letting murderers off the hook when there is a racial component[0]. With someone like Rittenhouse, who has become a darling of the white supremacy movement, the trial is part of an ongoing culture war. And culture warriors are going to do what they always do. [0] See, for example, the use of jury nullification after the US Civil War.

hasdf 5y ago
If a hispanic guy being aquitted for defending himself from three white attackers is your best example of white supremacy in action and your reference is from the civil war - maybe take a deep breath and realize the country isn't doing as bad as your peers at facebook claim
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  Don't forget that one of the attackers had been screaming racial slurs all night...
- SquishyPanda23 5y ago
  I'm sorry I've hurt your feelings.
HNTA_1 5y ago
>The US has a long history of letting murderers off the hook when there is a racial component. Luckily that wasn't the case here so your comment is immaterial, a straw man.
- SquishyPanda23 5y ago
  I'm sorry I've hurt your feelings.

rayiner 5y ago

As far as I can tell that’s not because of a real difference in self defense law, but because of a difference in gun laws. But the gun laws in America are what they are. Many people at this riot were armed: https://vimeo.com/461063053 https://vimeo.com/461063053. Listen to all the gun fire at the end of the video. Judging Rittenhouse as if he was in Germany makes no sense. Watch the video—this wasn’t Germany, it was Iraq. In Germany, the police would never have allowed armed rioters to burn down multiple city blocks over two days.

robbedpeter 5y ago

I'm pretty sure German law would find Rittenhouse acted in self defense, given the facts of the case. The people he killed were attacking him with weapons, one had threatened to kill him, he had a gun pointed at him, he was in reasonable fear for his own life, and he attempted to retreat before resorting to his gun. Remove all the media hoopla and it's not even a little bit unclear - put most people in that situation and they'd find it reasonable to use deadly force to defend yourself.