3 ms·

A judge dismissing a charge doesn't mean that the gun was legal, though: There are a lot of different reasons to dismiss. Technicalities and not having enough s

• civilized 5y ago
  The judge dismissed because the statute is unclear, and a general legal principle says that unclear rules must be read to favor whoever they're being applied against. This principle is a basic protection against tyranny by arbitrary application of muddled rules. In other words, the legislature may have tried to make what Rittenhouse did illegal, but they failed to do so clearly enough, and that means it is legal. Even if we allow for a gray area of "legal but not perfectly legal", it's not the legitimate province of media fact-checkers to arbitrate the boundaries of that -- for the same reason it's not legitimate for the state to arbitrate the boundaries of its own vague laws. Media fact checks are, in part, a tool for the media to discredit and damage the reputations of people it doesn't like. So the media doesn't get to write the rules of what is a fact, and gray areas should be construed in favor of the person being criticized.