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I am not American and I didn’t follow these events but sorry for me after watching that video it’s still complicated: the self-defense seems justified, but the

I am not American and I didn’t follow these events but sorry for me after watching that video it’s still complicated: the self-defense seems justified, but the initial issue of protecting property with guns is not: material possession and private property is not on the same level as human life. I understand a law allows it in that state hence the jury logical decision, but that doesn’t make it right, just legal. Had he not posed with an assault rifle in the first place two people would not be dead today, he is still morally responsible for that to me. So in the end I surprisingly understand Facebook choice.

muzz 5y ago
Also being not an American, I'm puzzled as to how there is apparently no requirement to report self-defense killings to the police. I guess when they find dead bodies in the street, they just assume it was self defense?
- flyingfences 5y ago
  He literally did report it, though. He walked straight down the street to the police and told them he'd just shot people.
  - muzz 5y ago
    Is there any police record? Or any evidence at all that the police heard that?
    - hajile 5y ago
      There is video evidence. The two police in the vehicle testified during the trial.
      - muzz 5y ago
        So no police report. Got it.
        esyir 5y ago
        Video evidence and the sworn testimony of two seems like a pretty strong case here.
        muzz 5y ago
        Entirely misses the point
        horns4lyfe 5y ago
        You asked if there is evidence. There is.
        muzz 5y ago
        Commenter was replying to the part specifically about a police report. Here is a link that may help you comprehend: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29427563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29427563
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- jpindar 5y ago
  Rittenhouse did turn himself in to the police. He was running towards them to do so, and when the Kenosha police wouldn't listen to him, he went to the police station in another nearby town.
  - muzz 5y ago
    Did he stop and talk to the police or keep going? How long after the shootings did the "police station in another nearby town" occur? Also, whom did the call after his first shooting-- the police or someone else?
    - jpindar 5y ago
      He tried to talk to them and they told him to go away. (I know, that seems strange to me too.) He went to the other police station at 1:30 am, about 2 hours after the incident.
    - hajile 5y ago
      The police pepper sprayed him when he got close. He called his friend who owned the gun. No need to call the police when they were less than a block away. I'd also imagine that 911 was swamped given how so much of the city was being destroyed.
      - muzz 5y ago
        So in America, the police just kinda stand by while "so much of the city was being destroyed" and two people are killed. Wow.
        hajile 5y ago
        The situation is more involved than that. The protests were about perceived police brutality. Cop's view: A guy had a knife in the seat that they'd seen previously. He was wanted for raping his a woman and was in the process of stealing her van and kidnapping her kids. Even if there were no knife, you don't allow the rapist to get into the deadly weapon and take kids as hostages. To them, the riots were unjust and a lot of them probably wanted to stop the city burning, but they were told to cordon off the area and basically forbidden from doing anything. At the same time, if they had to use force against a violent rioter, it would be all over the press and that officer would probably be fired. This leaves the armed citizens as the only line of defense (and a line without the police politics). This seems like the reason why they praise them in their interactions. Politician's view: The city is run by one family of Democrat politicians. Their party officially supported the riots with the now current Vise-President actually raising funds for the rioters. Going against the mob would not only go against the party, but it would cause the mob to show up at their houses (this happened in other cities) and might even throw their family's dynasty out of power. They didn't care about the part that was burning because it was the poorer parts of the city. Citizen's view: The politicians ordered the police to abandon them. They had signs like "we have little children here" in an attempt to keep their families safe (it seems that even having BLM support signs wasn't enough). The businesses were generally either not insured or under-insured. Lots of people worked at those places and were looking at not having a job. Everyone's cars were being demolished or burned. For many of them, everything they spent their entire life working on was ruined in a few hours. Amed Citizen's view: We've been hiding in fear for two days now as the police do nothing. If they won't, we will. Today, we're putting a stop to this. Rioter's view: I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds. Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!”
MaxikCZ 5y ago
The path from protecting property to protecting lives might be shorter than one wants to believe. People usually are not destroying property of others because its moral compared to taking lives, they do so because they left the morals of our society behind in the first place. Wanna take a bet that the guy running at you and screaming just want to tear your shirt? >Had he not posed with an assault rifle in the first place two people would not be dead today Had the victim not defended himself the offender could still offend today. I don't understand this victim-blaming, I really don't. If I see a guy with a rifle protecting his property, somehow its his fault I get shot after I charge at him?
- tarsinge 5y ago
  I think you miss my point. I’m not questioning the self-defense, it’s pretty clear in the video, but the moral responsibility of someone protecting a property by being in the street with a rifle in the first place (I’m not talking about personal home invasion here).
  - padastra 5y ago
    Agree 100%. Many riots / burning of buildings / lootings were allowed while media spurred them on and called them peaceful protests. Police in many cities gave up on enforcement. In those scenarios the state no longer has a monopoly on violence.
polartx 5y ago
That’s what separates America from many places. While you say to the property owner, “property is not worth a human life”. We say to the burglar/arsonist, “is property worth [your] human life?” Also assault rifle isn’t a thing. The term is a made up classification of a weapon.
- Akronymus 5y ago
  IMO the attackers value their own life less than the acts they tried to do.
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  Assault rifles are certainly a thing, both in the descriptive sense -- everyone knows what the word refers to -- and in the prescriptive sense -- various armies including the US have or had classifications that defined it as a term for selective-fire weapons that fire an intermediate power cartridge like 5.56mm or Russian 7.62x39mm.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    A caliber doesn't make an "assault rifle". I can buy a hunting rifle in those calibers as well. In the USA there is no -legal- definition of an assault rifle, it is a made up term to scare people. A semi auto shot gun, hunting rifle, and pistol are all easily within 90% as dangerous as an "assault rifle". Do those get banned as well? I think that's why people say it's ludicrous to say "we just want to ban assault rifles" because we all know what comes after that if you give in to that logic.
    - lbayes 5y ago
      As a veteran of the US Marine Corps, I want to clarify this a bit for people. Yes, caliber does not make an Assault Rifle. No, it's not a, "made up term." Shotguns, hunting rifles and pistols are optimized for specific activities and generally become less effective as the circumstances diverge from that optimized range or shooting position. This makes them less ideal for killing humans everywhere we are found. Assault rifles are optimized for human to human combat. They are optimized to deliver a large number effective rounds down range, from a variety of positions at a variety of distances. These tools are far more effective and efficient at killing human beings over an extended duration firefight in arbitrary circumstances. It's the shape, flexibility and effectiveness of the platform that we're referring to when we say, "Assault Rifle." Please don't muddy the waters here simply because the US legal system isn't able to overcome NRA bullshit.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
We believe also that you're responsible for your own actions. That include sthe guys who attacked him while holding the gun. It is also entirely stupid to attack a person with a gun rather than backing away slowly and moving elsewhere. You won't win in the situation 99/100 times so you should extract yourself from the situation. He was not breaking the law by being there with a gun. If he was this court trial would have had a completely different verdict. As with most things in life there are two sides to the same story and two sets of responsibility and expectations.
marcusverus 5y ago
> Had he not posed with an assault rifle in the first place two people would not be dead today, he is still morally responsible for that to me. So basically Rittenhouse 'morally accountable' for not foreseeing the unforseeable. How silly. Rittenhouse attended a protest while legally carrying a firearm. 2020 had seen tens of thousands of people do the same. How many people were forced to fire their guns in self-defense at a protest? I can't think of a single one. Any risk he was incurring would have been remote and purely hypothetical. For that you hold him morally responsible for these men's deaths? What about the actions of those men who he killed? Unlike Rittenhouse's attendance at the protest, their decision to attack Kyle Rittenhouse was decidedly not legal. Unlike Rittenhouse's choice to attend the protest, which carried only hypothetical danger, his attackers would have had no doubt that attacking a man with a gun carried risks that were neither remote nor hypothetical. Remember, when conflict seemed imminent, Rittenhouse ran away, attempting to avoid conflict. His attackers chased him down and forced the issue.

muzz 5y ago

Also being not an American, I'm puzzled as to how there is apparently no requirement to report self-defense killings to the police. I guess when they find dead bodies in the street, they just assume it was self defense?

flyingfences 5y ago
He literally did report it, though. He walked straight down the street to the police and told them he'd just shot people.
- muzz 5y ago
  Is there any police record? Or any evidence at all that the police heard that?
  - hajile 5y ago
    There is video evidence. The two police in the vehicle testified during the trial.
    - muzz 5y ago
      So no police report. Got it.
      - esyir 5y ago
        Video evidence and the sworn testimony of two seems like a pretty strong case here.
        muzz 5y ago
        Entirely misses the point
        horns4lyfe 5y ago
        You asked if there is evidence. There is.
        muzz 5y ago
        Commenter was replying to the part specifically about a police report. Here is a link that may help you comprehend: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29427563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29427563
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
jpindar 5y ago
Rittenhouse did turn himself in to the police. He was running towards them to do so, and when the Kenosha police wouldn't listen to him, he went to the police station in another nearby town.
- muzz 5y ago
  Did he stop and talk to the police or keep going? How long after the shootings did the "police station in another nearby town" occur? Also, whom did the call after his first shooting-- the police or someone else?
  - jpindar 5y ago
    He tried to talk to them and they told him to go away. (I know, that seems strange to me too.) He went to the other police station at 1:30 am, about 2 hours after the incident.
  - hajile 5y ago
    The police pepper sprayed him when he got close. He called his friend who owned the gun. No need to call the police when they were less than a block away. I'd also imagine that 911 was swamped given how so much of the city was being destroyed.
    - muzz 5y ago
      So in America, the police just kinda stand by while "so much of the city was being destroyed" and two people are killed. Wow.
      - hajile 5y ago
        The situation is more involved than that. The protests were about perceived police brutality. Cop's view: A guy had a knife in the seat that they'd seen previously. He was wanted for raping his a woman and was in the process of stealing her van and kidnapping her kids. Even if there were no knife, you don't allow the rapist to get into the deadly weapon and take kids as hostages. To them, the riots were unjust and a lot of them probably wanted to stop the city burning, but they were told to cordon off the area and basically forbidden from doing anything. At the same time, if they had to use force against a violent rioter, it would be all over the press and that officer would probably be fired. This leaves the armed citizens as the only line of defense (and a line without the police politics). This seems like the reason why they praise them in their interactions. Politician's view: The city is run by one family of Democrat politicians. Their party officially supported the riots with the now current Vise-President actually raising funds for the rioters. Going against the mob would not only go against the party, but it would cause the mob to show up at their houses (this happened in other cities) and might even throw their family's dynasty out of power. They didn't care about the part that was burning because it was the poorer parts of the city. Citizen's view: The politicians ordered the police to abandon them. They had signs like "we have little children here" in an attempt to keep their families safe (it seems that even having BLM support signs wasn't enough). The businesses were generally either not insured or under-insured. Lots of people worked at those places and were looking at not having a job. Everyone's cars were being demolished or burned. For many of them, everything they spent their entire life working on was ruined in a few hours. Amed Citizen's view: We've been hiding in fear for two days now as the police do nothing. If they won't, we will. Today, we're putting a stop to this. Rioter's view: I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds. Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!”

MaxikCZ 5y ago

The path from protecting property to protecting lives might be shorter than one wants to believe. People usually are not destroying property of others because its moral compared to taking lives, they do so because they left the morals of our society behind in the first place. Wanna take a bet that the guy running at you and screaming just want to tear your shirt? >Had he not posed with an assault rifle in the first place two people would not be dead today Had the victim not defended himself the offender could still offend today. I don't understand this victim-blaming, I really don't. If I see a guy with a rifle protecting his property, somehow its his fault I get shot after I charge at him?

tarsinge 5y ago
I think you miss my point. I’m not questioning the self-defense, it’s pretty clear in the video, but the moral responsibility of someone protecting a property by being in the street with a rifle in the first place (I’m not talking about personal home invasion here).
- padastra 5y ago
  Agree 100%. Many riots / burning of buildings / lootings were allowed while media spurred them on and called them peaceful protests. Police in many cities gave up on enforcement. In those scenarios the state no longer has a monopoly on violence.

polartx 5y ago

That’s what separates America from many places. While you say to the property owner, “property is not worth a human life”. We say to the burglar/arsonist, “is property worth [your] human life?” Also assault rifle isn’t a thing. The term is a made up classification of a weapon.

Akronymus 5y ago
IMO the attackers value their own life less than the acts they tried to do.
MagnumOpus 5y ago
Assault rifles are certainly a thing, both in the descriptive sense -- everyone knows what the word refers to -- and in the prescriptive sense -- various armies including the US have or had classifications that defined it as a term for selective-fire weapons that fire an intermediate power cartridge like 5.56mm or Russian 7.62x39mm.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  A caliber doesn't make an "assault rifle". I can buy a hunting rifle in those calibers as well. In the USA there is no -legal- definition of an assault rifle, it is a made up term to scare people. A semi auto shot gun, hunting rifle, and pistol are all easily within 90% as dangerous as an "assault rifle". Do those get banned as well? I think that's why people say it's ludicrous to say "we just want to ban assault rifles" because we all know what comes after that if you give in to that logic.
  - lbayes 5y ago
    As a veteran of the US Marine Corps, I want to clarify this a bit for people. Yes, caliber does not make an Assault Rifle. No, it's not a, "made up term." Shotguns, hunting rifles and pistols are optimized for specific activities and generally become less effective as the circumstances diverge from that optimized range or shooting position. This makes them less ideal for killing humans everywhere we are found. Assault rifles are optimized for human to human combat. They are optimized to deliver a large number effective rounds down range, from a variety of positions at a variety of distances. These tools are far more effective and efficient at killing human beings over an extended duration firefight in arbitrary circumstances. It's the shape, flexibility and effectiveness of the platform that we're referring to when we say, "Assault Rifle." Please don't muddy the waters here simply because the US legal system isn't able to overcome NRA bullshit.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

We believe also that you're responsible for your own actions. That include sthe guys who attacked him while holding the gun. It is also entirely stupid to attack a person with a gun rather than backing away slowly and moving elsewhere. You won't win in the situation 99/100 times so you should extract yourself from the situation. He was not breaking the law by being there with a gun. If he was this court trial would have had a completely different verdict. As with most things in life there are two sides to the same story and two sets of responsibility and expectations.

marcusverus 5y ago

> Had he not posed with an assault rifle in the first place two people would not be dead today, he is still morally responsible for that to me. So basically Rittenhouse 'morally accountable' for not foreseeing the unforseeable. How silly. Rittenhouse attended a protest while legally carrying a firearm. 2020 had seen tens of thousands of people do the same. How many people were forced to fire their guns in self-defense at a protest? I can't think of a single one. Any risk he was incurring would have been remote and purely hypothetical. For that you hold him morally responsible for these men's deaths? What about the actions of those men who he killed? Unlike Rittenhouse's attendance at the protest, their decision to attack Kyle Rittenhouse was decidedly not legal. Unlike Rittenhouse's choice to attend the protest, which carried only hypothetical danger, his attackers would have had no doubt that attacking a man with a gun carried risks that were neither remote nor hypothetical. Remember, when conflict seemed imminent, Rittenhouse ran away, attempting to avoid conflict. His attackers chased him down and forced the issue.