5 ms·
For starters, a prerequisite to be a “good guy with a gun”, you need to possess and carry that gun legally, which Gaige did not do. He was a convicted felon, in
by xyzzyz 5y ago
For starters, a prerequisite to be a “good guy with a gun”, you need to possess and carry that gun legally, which Gaige did not do. He was a convicted felon, ineligible to possess a gun, much less carry one concealed. However, he was not, and will not be prosecuted for that, almost as if gun control people were not interested in actually controlling illegally possessed guns.
- RC_ITR 5y agoLegalism and moralism are independent concepts.
- vkou 5y agoSo, if he was not a convicted felon, would shooting and killing Rittenhouse had been a more or less reasonable thing for him to do?
- skinkestek 5y agoI don't think that is the main problem. A person can do the right thing even if they so far has done the wrong thing. The problem here was that he was part of a violent destructive crowd and went even further than the rest of the crowd in attacking an innocent (as judged by the court) guy with a gun.
- vkou 5y agoIf you are in a crowd, and an active shooter just killed one or two people in front of you, are you going to sit around and wait for a court to determine that they were legally innocent? Or would you be completely within your moral rights to defend yourself from the shooter, by any means at your disposal?
- skinkestek 5y agoIn case you weren't aware: Active shooter seems to have a defined meaning and the courts decided he was not. The rest of my comment assumes you were not aware of this and just meant someone who just shot someone else. Now: legally it seems in Wisconsin one doesn't have the right to follow after someone and pull a gun on them when they aren't threatening anyone. One does however has a right to shoot if someone attacks with deadly force. If this is a good law or not I'll not discuss - personally I'd prefer if police rounded up and judges handed out some generous penalties to the rioters. morally, one guy had gone around helping put out fires in a poor neighbourhood targeted by riot tourism while also being friendly towards those as far as possible The others were violent rioters enjoying an opportunity to destroy innocent peoples livelihoods under the cover of supporting the very people they were attacking.
- vkou 5y agoYou seem to be missing that when you may be in an active shooter situation, you can't wait for a court to decide whether it is, or isn't one. Rittenhouse felt threatened, but for some reason, didn't wait for a court to make a determination. The people he shot also felt threatened. And for good reason, given that he killed two of them, in two separate incidents. If he has the moral right to use lethal force to defend himself against a threat to his person, with imperfect information, without waiting a year for a court to split hairs over who was and was not at fault, so do they. He is incredibly lucky that Grosskreutz gave the question of killing a man more thought than he did.
- xyzzyz 5y agoThe relevant legal standard is not “felt threatened”, but that a person must have a reasonable grounds (by objective standards of a reasonable person, not by subjective standards of threat, which might be completely unreasonable) to believe, and in fact believe that there is an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm. Since Rittenhouse was quite apparently running away, and Grossenkreutz was pursuing him, in no way can a reasonable conclude that Rittenhouse was an imminent threat to Grossenkreutz — if he didn’t pursue him, he’d be completely safe.
- vkou 5y ago> to believe, and in fact believe that there is an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm. Which any reasonable person in that situation would have believed, with the information available to them at the time. Had Rittenhouse dropped his gun, he would not have been an imminent threat to the crowd. But he did not. For all anybody on the scene knew, he would start shooting again, as soon as he had a chance to. Disarming him was one way to remove that imminent threat of death and great bodily harm, which Huber tried to do. Killing him would have been another, which Grosskreutz considered, but did not try to do.
- xyzzyz 5y agoThat’s a cool story, but it’s not how law works, so I do not recommend testing this theory.
- Akronymus 5y agoNo, I'd try to retreat first. Unless the person were to aim the gun at me.