I could learn to hate journalism, I really could. This is an abomination of the craft.
Funny, I’ve never seen a headline that does this much work excusing and distancing a young black man charged with murder from his crime. pic.twitter.com/pjSzu1U3qE
— Jane Bradley (@jane__bradley) August 28, 2020
I mean, we’re all just objects in space, shifting meaninglessly in time. You can’t really demonstrate causality or even any kind of connection at all between multiple events. Two people died, bullets came out of a gun, an editor emitted words, the sun rises and sets, everything is meaningless.
What purpose can be found in being a vigilante, except being able to shoot people?
It is all very strange.
He gets the benefit of cop-speak because he did what the cops really want to do. He will probably also claim that he was very much afraid for his life, after travelling to another city, bringing his gun to confront
protestorsrioters. Just a kid, looking for his purpose, really. Always wanted to help the Kenosha sheriff to warehouse troublemakers when he grew up. But all this liberal bias in the media, horrible!He did what the cops would have wanted to do but couldn’t because of the inconvenience it would bring them.
They’ll make sure at worst he gets a Brock Turner sentence.
“Were killed”????
And much barfing was committed on my keyboard.
This is why good writers avoid using the passive voice.
I have an overwhelming feeling of the inevitability of this kid — years of NRA activism lobbying for open-carry, fueled by right-wing fear propaganda of “urban” people, and sprinkle in popular culture post-apocalyptic fantasies featuring gun-toting young heroes.
Re: quotetheunquote (#5)
Don’t leave out the “night of unrest”. It’s very important that eveyone should know that if anything it was the unrest that is to blame.
@Sonja
I read an article about his school peers. Apparently there was a widespread opinion about him that he was a future mass school shooter, though most of those holding that opinion assumed he would shoot up their school.
Since the vigilante crap is all over culture, and since the result is so obvious, I would argue that any site that advocates vigilantism needs to be shut down.
-A different form of tragedy, this time caused by the indifference of facebook mamagers
“Man who believed virus was hoax loses wife to Covid-19” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53892856
To the political class, all these preventable deaths -by guns or by medical ignorance- is seen as an acceptable cost of the status quo. So nothing will change unless the status quo assholes are forced out.
There is no law of nature that says people need an AR-15. There is no law of nature that says schools should be starved of funding and churn out generation after generation of suckers who think chloroquinine or bleach cures COVID-19.
Yikes. Objectively speaking, he is a “radicalized youth”, following the same impulse that produces terrorists and youth militia members in other failed states. The US isn’t as far along this path as some places, but it is clearly headed in that direction.
He is already a hero to the right wingnuts.
He killed two people and seriously wounded one.
He owned the libs!
He triggered the snowflakes!
They were leftists and deserved it.!
He might well beat the rap as happened to similar shooters and killers in Seattle and Portland.
You know what time it is?
Time for some victim blaming!!!
(It’s always time for victim blaming for right wingnuts.)
The police chief of Kenosha has got this one.
It was the victim’s fault for being out after curfew.
Those 3,000 people who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks when the World Trade Center was hit by jet planes?
It was their own fault for being at work in those skyscrapers.
PS You can see that there is a serious problem with the Kenosha police force.
It starts at the top with the police chief himself, who should be fired for what he just said.
raven@11 I used to think “we’re a nation of laws” (most of the time anyway) but now I give up. He is no different from any other crowd shooter. If people turn him into a hero, we’ve moved just a notch further towards being a failed state.
What I found even more disturbing was that before he split off from his vigilante group, he and others were actively encouraged by police to display firearms and threaten people in the guise of “protecting business.” First off, our police are already heavily armed, though they shouldn’t be. I thought the flip side of that deal was that they maintained the “monopoly of violence” and told people (what’s that line?) “Don’t take the law into your own hands.”
If the police are now outsourcing to the lowest bidder, you might as well stick a fork in it. The United States was an interesting experiment while it lasted. It never quite lived up to expectations, and other models of Western Democracy clearly surpassed it.
Another hero for the fundie xians/GOP.
The Kenosha killer will join Florida killer Zimmerman, the Navy Seal guy who randomly killed Iraqis, Donald Trump, all the criminals Trump pardoned, Vladimir Putin, and all the other horrible people as their version of saints and heroes.
It used to be that you had to be killed to be a martyr.
In the modern version of GOP xianity, it helps a lot to be a killer instead.
I did see some attempt from the far left to make this point at the very beginning, though it was quashed pretty fast. In fact, though I love New York and felt very sad that day I acknowledge some truth to the idea that if your big salary is coming from global capitalist exploitation, protected by the US military, you are on the front lines of a war whether you know it or not. That was a day the war came to the people least expecting it.
Of course, it also came to people working at Windows on the World restaurant, and those with low-paying office jobs. It was tragic and unjustified. But nearly 19 years later am I finally allowed to say it was the chickens coming home to roost? (Historians will eventually.)
Anyway, participating in peaceful assembly is constitutionally protected free expression. Doing it after curfew is civil disobedience that at most carries some minor legal penalties. This police chief sounds like he would fit better in a fascist state. (And here’s something to consider. After Trump loses, which he’d better, how many of his former supporters will still hold positions like police chief in many places?)
His classmates said he threatened people who criticized Trump. He wasn’t bullied, he WAS the bully.
@16
Not too dissimilar to the pseudo victim-hood the Christian Right has been playing at for decades. Or anyone who uses the term “reverse racism”. Or the anti-mask Karens. Or poor Donnie when Twitter fact checks him. I’m sensing a pattern here.
Call me cynical, but I don’t think Rittenhouse will do a Zimmerman here, because the victim was white and non-threatening. https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/28/us/kenosha-wisconsin-protest-shooting-victims/index.html In fact, Anthony Huber fits the profile of a mass-shooting hero. The other side will try to smear him as “antifa” for sure. But when this is tried in court rather than the media, he has a much better chance of being seen sympathetically. It’s a battle of “victim’s rights” and “2nd amendment rights.” Both are big deals with the rightwing and both sides in this case involve white people.
But this is very similar to my “stand your ground” theory of why I have a license to kill. I am a middle aged man with weak upper body musculature, poor coordination, no fighting skills, and no experience with firearms. Therefore, if I am walking down the street with an AR-15, I am in constant danger of being shot and disarmed by anyone who can get in close enough range. To protect myself, I would have to shoot anyone who came within 6 feet of me. I cannot read minds, so I have reasonable grounds to think anyone might threaten me. Moreover, I size up most people around me as a potential threat. So if I am armed and walking near you, you had better keep your distance. I have the legal right in “stand your ground” states to act in my own defense.
IANAL needless to say. Is there a hole in this argument?
@#13, PaulBC
I used to lean this way, but honestly democracy has not fared very well in any of its incarnations. People like to mock the US system and claim we’d be better off with a Parliamentary system, but look at the UK, the classic Parliamentary system: they have English Trump (a.k.a. Boris Johnson) in charge with an overwhelming majority in Parliament — so strong that polls show that even now, with his mismanagement of Coronavirus which is, by statistics per capita, worse than that of the US, and with the revelation that everyone in his government has been shorting the market all along on the presumption of a no-deal Brexit to the tune of billions of pounds, he would still be PM if there was an election tomorrow — but nevertheless his party got significantly less than 40% of the actual vote. And historically, it has been a century since the UK had a government which was not dominated by one of the big two parties. You can say that smaller parties can influence the government as part of a coalition, but in a coalition a smaller party’s influence is basically to be able to veto extreme legislation — nothing will pass that the party leading the coalition doesn’t like, but things may pass which the smaller parties don’t like. That doesn’t really differ much from the role of Independents in Congress, except that the party partisans in the US unnecessarily dismiss the idea of Independents, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy most of the time.
Or you have Australia, firmly in the grasp of extraordinarily stupid and vicious Fox-News-style right-wingers despite using (a form of) instant runoff voting. Or France, where, in the end of the last election, the center-right banker Macron ended up facing off against the far-right Nazi-in-all-but-name Le Pen in the last election. Or Spain, which won’t condemn fascism and treats Catalonians the way American police treat black people. Or Italy — remember Berlusconi? Or Canada, where Trudeau pulls the Clintonian trick of claiming to be on the left but consistently pushing rightward on just about everything. If there’s a trick to keep vicious, awful leadership out of power, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the form of democracy.
Spotted in the Twitter comments:
/Godwin
Owlmirror@20 I’m sure you would not have trouble finding Americans who see it that way, maybe not those who actually fought in WWII, but boomers and younger.
…not to mention those who consider the Civil War a big, tragic misunderstanding and that if only Black people had waited another 75 years or so, slavery would have ended anyway (there are places, I’m told, where nearly everyone sees it this way).
@17 and @18
Yesterday someone posted a screen cap claiming that one of the victims was on the sex-offender registry. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it’s not worth considering. The terrorist didn’t know it and you’re not allowed to “get lucky” when you kill a stranger for doing nothing illegal who winds up being a bad person.
(The following is cross-posted from poopyhead’s current [Pandemic and] Political Madness All the Time thread…)
Vigilante, volunteer, terrorist: how the US media covers Kyle Rittenhouse:
The Grauniad is current using , albeit as it points out:
That would seem to describe this kook.
Can I be shocked at the fact that a police department, already armed to the teeth with military grade weapons, would actively encourage vigilante groups like the one Rittenhouse split off from, and offer them bottled water.
Uh, did somebody change the part about “Don’t take the law into your own hands?” I must have missed the memo. Are bucket brigades now putting out fires? Is the local witch offering remedies in her shack in the woods?
I am old enough to remember Dragnet (in UHF reruns of course). Joe Friday was a real “square” to be sure, but I think he would have seen those guys and said “Hold on, fellas. I think you need to go home and get a good night’s sleep.”
@25 “That would seem to describe this kook.”
Yes. He’s a radicalized youth. In a different context, he could be al Qaeda, Janjaweed, or a Brownshirt. It’s the same trick. You start with the male, teenage mind (a stereotype, yes, but I am pretty sure correlations hold). You pump it with a lot of hype about being a hero. At that age, empathy is low, and there is little to lose in wealth, reputation, or relationships. It’s all a big game. They will kill for you readily (it works for gangs like MS-13 too). In this case we literally have (impeached) POTUS egging on these kids.
This is an age old trick, and the fact that this is a white kid from Wisconsin is irrelevant, but apparently enough to fool the willing.
If only there were a trained, well equipped organization funded by the citizens, whose task it is to enforce the laws and maintain the peace.
Instead, we have police forces like the ones in Minneapolis and Kenosha.
to be honest I feel sorry for that kid. Here is the interview with him just before the shooting
he clearly seems to be there genuinely to help.
And this is 100 times more terrifying than if he was gun toting asshole like McCluskey.
The mass disinformation brainwashed him into thinking he can help with his AR-15 and medkit, that this white kid is prepared to act in complicated conflict situation, in the middle of the night.
Then he panics and starts shooting at those who go towards him.
It is not to say, he is not guilty of homicide (I can’t speak if this qualifies as murder), it is not about him.
It is about NRA, politicians, american culture that makes stupid kids thinking that they understand the protests, that what they heard in TV accuretly describes the issue and prepares them to face it. That stupid kids think AR-15 will be useful there instead of being dangerous to him.
It is always easy option to blame 1 person and pretend everything is fine, it was only 1 evil person. The more terrifying issue is when you understand there are thousands of others that start innocent and with good intentions…. and political war transforms them into potential terrorists.
Gorzki@27 I’ll grant you your concern if you’re willing to “feel sorry” for the three youngest 9/11 hijackers, all of them age 20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks Or how about Dylann Roof?
Dumb kid. Dumb kids all of them. When I get done feeling sorry for all their victims, maybe in my copious free time I will feel sorry for the killers.
he clearly seems to be there genuinely to help
With a Shooty McShootface?
@22 Alverant
I call massive bullshit on that screenshot, for multiple reasons.
The screen cap is a webpage from homefacts.com, which explicitly states that they don’t check whether or not their information is still valid, or whether or not it was accurate to begin with.
According to the screen cap, Rosenbaum was in the official sex offender register since 2002. And yet, checking the 2013 screencaps of the website, we discover that Rosenbaum was not flagged as a sex offender back then.
Literally every single screen cap that claims that Rosenbaum was a sex offender? They come from either August 27th 2020 (the day he died), or from the 28th. After the 28th, all pages claiming that Rosenbaum was a sex offender have disappeared.
The HomeFacts page claims that they collected the info on him from an “official state registry website”. Except that the supposed info on Rosenbaum isn’t there. People claim that the records are scrapped when the sex offender dies; but they also point out that there’s a lot of information that should still exist even after the offender’s death – and yet it, too, has disappeared. Almost as if it never existed.
The “Rosenbaum was a sex offender” claim has been widely promoted by Trumpeteers, which immediately places it into the “do not accept it unless there’s third-party evidence of its accuracy” category.
So, in short: I think that someone (cop? Trumper?) falsely flagged Rosenbaum as a sex offender immediately after he died.
Gorzki, #27
Oh, fuck off.
well I can feel sorry for them all the killers and the dead. I do not feel as sorry for those that encouraged the killers to kill, but them to I have pity for. their world is so small and mean and full of fear and hate.
they sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.
they have chosen their path it leads to a narrow mean world and pointless destruction. It looks like there is no way to avoid the results or the conflict it is a great pity none the less.
uncle frogy
Tizio@30 Every such “fact” is a cement milkshake to me until thoroughly documented otherwise. We know that not only extremist propaganda, but official messaging from police departments is full of the kind of lies that “travel halfway around the world while the truth is still lacing its shoes.” I don’t believe any of it.
PaulBC:
You probably already know this, but he was from Illinois.
And on that note, his extradition hearing has been delayed to September 25. He did not actually “appear in court today” like The Times claims in the tweet from the OP.
Gorzki:
It doesn’t seem that way to me. And there is of course a world of difference between “seems to be” and “is.”
And he didn’t use his medkit, for any of his three victims. It probably seemed like a good prop, while he could still try to maintain the illusion that he was somehow there to help, while in another state after curfew with a gun he couldn’t even legally carry. (The AR-15 definitely breaks the illusion for me, but I guess some could look past it.) Maybe if he or one of his fellow gangsters had been injured, rather than “bad guys,” it would have had found some use. Some report I read mentioned that he was a YMCA lifeguard, and I bet it probably came from there.
The claim that Rosenbaum was on the sex offender registry seems to be yet again, another lie from the right wingnuts.
I checked around the net using Google and it only appears on a few websites run by the slime molds who voted for Trump.
As many have pointed out, this is irrelevant anyway.
It’s not legal to go around killing people that might be sex offenders.
edit: “it would have found some use.”
unclefrogy@32
But can you? Imagine you had to say it for each one. “I feel sorry for —“. How would you prioritize? Gorzki@27 has verbalized his sympathy for the killer. Let’s just say I feel sorry for Anthony Huber, who looks to me like a friendly, caring guy in the one photo I saw. I feel sorry for each of the people in the memorials I read in the NYT after 9/11. I feel sorry for those killed at Emanuel AME Church, though I don’t remember any of their names right now. I did read about them.
Yes, I “feel sorry” for all the people suffering in the world, those starving, those dying of dysentery from polluted water, those “disappeared” for their political beliefs, or those massacred just because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time… and what the hell, maybe for those 14 year olds pushed into militias at an age before they could really grasp the import of their actions who may carry out these atrocities.
Is that enough? Can I feel sorry for a million people at a time. That’s still gonna be a lot of work. How about a billion? I “feel sorry” for all those who suffer (‘cos like “all lives matter” right?). Life is suffering. Am I going to be Buddha or Jesus here? Does it matter what I think?
My view is that if my “feelings” matter at all, and they don’t by much, they had better be a little specific and tied to my direct knowledge. My sympathy is a scarce resource for me, and I will not offer it up to those who deserve it LESS than others. In my view, the killer (who I won’t dignify with a name) can get his sympathy from the Almighty who may have time for this (if he existed, anyway) but he’s not getting any from me. I do not have it to spare.
The Atlantic has a pretty good article about the path of radicalization that leads to this outcome.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-and-sheepdog-mentality/615805/
Never met a gun owner that thought the odds of their weapon being used on themselves or loved ones was realistically so much greater than it being used to heroically defend themselves and others. The actual statistics only apply to others.
And has been credibly accused of groping a woman reporter, displayed hostility and anger towards a member of caucus when she told him she wasn’t running for re-election, wore blackface on multiple occasions, interfered with the Justice Minister’s investigation into SNC Lavalin (Canada’s first woman and first Indigenous justice minister), then removed her from both cabinet and the caucus, and was recently involved in the WE scandal. The fact is that if he was Justin Jones or Justin Smith rather than Justin Trudeau, he would be nowhere near elected office. All of his success has been on his late father’s coattails.
Come to think of it, had Jack Layton not died of cancer, even Trudeau might not have been able to beat him in 2015.
Lest anyone see this as an endorsement of Andrew Scheer, think again. Not only is Scheer a fucking idiot, he’s also a liar, fake insurance broker, and embezzler from his own party. There was, however, at least one legitimate alternative to the Liberal Party: Jagmeet Singh and the NDP.
Not to mention Thatcher and supposed Labour PM Blair.
Homo sapiens appear to be manifestly incapable of self-government. It’s a species problem.
One of the few French films that I truly, truly loved. Usually titled in English as “With a Friend Like Harry.” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216800/ but the real title is “Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien” sometimes translated “Harry, He’s Here to Help” (though I think it is more literally, “Harry a friend who wishes you well).
Yes, much like Harry. He only wants to help.
Yes, let’s remember Anthony Huber, a man who tried to protect others with nothing but a skateboard, who leaves behind a, partner, a young daughter, and surely many others.
@37
do not get me wrong my feeling sorry for the killers is in no way an excuse for them they chose to do what they do. If chose destruction it is what you will get. Every victory is as a funeral but that does not stop the striving forward anyway I did not chose the struggle at the same time I am not going to capitulate because of my sympathy for the opponents of freedom.
I was interviewed by a journalism student in college. They used only part of my statement and it was completely out of context. It made it look like I was critical of something I was not. I learned never to speak to a journalist and not to trust the narratives they push. It was a crappy way to learn an important lesson. Im still annoyed about it.
unclefrogy@42 I was raised as a Catholic to believe in mercy and forgiveness (I am no longer a religious believer, but just to put this in context, because I still have those values). It’s not a matter of whether the killers “deserve” sympathy or whether it’s an excuse. Obviously it’s not and I didn’t interpret your comments that way.
My point is just that if feeling is an active process, and one with a great deal of personal investment. How many milliliters is a tear drop? Maybe less than one, maybe 0.1ml. Are there a billion people who have suffered enough to merit my tears? Sure. Do I have 100000 liters of tears to offer? Over what period of time? Not in my entire life if I were to live 100 years.
So please understand if I am stingy with my feelings. It is easy to say “I feel your pain” as Bill Clinton was known to do. Now tell me you’ll take me up on that offer. What? It turns out I don’t want your pain after all. Whose pain am I willing to feel? Not Mohamed Atta’s, not Dylann Roof’s, not Kyle Rittenhouse’s. I am selective in my feelings.
My nerdy libertarian friends in the 80s used like quoting Robert Heinlein “An armed society is a polite society.”
But who needs to guess? Just ask those polite folks in Kenosha.
(Jamelle Bouie in NYT)
FWIW, Kyle Rittenhouse is already well on the way to saint hood.
A fundie xian crowd funding site has already raised $100,000 for him.
This guy is going to be right up there with Trump, Falwell, Apaio, Giuliani and the rest of the trolls that pass as heroes for the fundie xians/GOP.
I guess we now know how to be a modern day right wingnut saint.
Just kill the right groups of people.
Documentation of above claims.
Fundie xianity isn’t a source for morality.
That has been crystal clear for decades.
It is a source for evil though.
The only question is how low can they go and so far, there is no bottom in sight.
raven@47 Why do they have to scrounge for donations? Jerry Falwell, Jr. just won himself a $10.5 million severance package, and it’s not like he’s busy doing anything else right now.
I think Gorzki is on to something. The “One Righteous Man Wih A Gun”-story is pretty well ingrained in the culture. And as a gun owner (Not in the US) I do get part of the mentality.
But I have noticed that some people have a more-than-mildly creepy “hero fetish”. People who fantasize about becoming the John McClain of some random terrorist attack. And that level of childishness should never be combined with assault rifles.
@49, “John McClain”? Who is that?
A bit of searching suggests the Bruce Willis character in teh Die Hard films, John McClane, is meant. (Apologies for being perhaps pointlessly pedantic phere.)
@15
This seems like a version of she shouldn’t have been wearing that. I challenge you to tell the relatives of the workers at the yarn company, the Port Authority, the Metro Transportation Council, the Society of Satellite Professionals International, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the other restaurants, etc. that they should not have been working in the same buildings as the representatives of the Evil Empires. Ask them if they were able to distinguish their relatives’ bodies from that of Teh Evil.
susans@51 I don’t blame anyone and no, obviously I would not take you up on that challenge. However, I’m also a huge beneficiary of global capitalism and just as vulnerable. The chickens really do come home to roost sometimes.
@blf #50: That’s the one. Thanks, it didn’t feel 100% but at some point I just grow tired of spell checking everytrhing. F*ck it, you’ll get the gist of it if you give it half a try.
Also: Why was it necessary to point out skin color?
@54, Sorry, again I’m not quite sure what you are referring to?
However, speculating, the point people are dancing around is that if this kook have been Black, then instead of being (initially) ignored by the
policegoons — despite, as I understand it, carrying a Shooty McShootface with people shouting to stop him — he’d have been arrested after being shot multiple times.“Two people died, bullets came out of a gun, an editor emitted words, the sun rises and sets, everything is meaningless.”
If the person saying that had a tambourine, you’d be cheering.
@25: “This is is an age old trick, and the fact that this is a white kid from Wisconsin is irrelevant, but apparently enough to fool the willing.”
The fact is that the white kid is from Antioch Illinois and crossed the state line into Wisconsin with an assault rifle and handgun…to shoot people with.
There. Fixed. Now its even more “irrelevant”.
anchor@57 Yeah, I got the state wrong. Sorry. Maybe I should have just hedged and said a “a white kid from Whiteville” (I kind of like that better though I may get some grief for it) but anyway my point is that he’s a radicalized youth like any other, and it would be obvious to anyone except for affinity bias.
PaulBC–
I’ve always loved that quote because it shows how full of shit people can be. “An armed society is a polite society”? What a load of crock. This is so transparently untrue that no-one can possibly believe it without a huge side serve of motivated reasoning. Heavily armed groups are not known for being polite. Not soldiers. Not police. Not gangsters. Not hunters.
And besides, who puts politeness above basic human rights as a core value of society? We all know who. People with power who think lesser entities should bow and scrape to them even as their lives are being vicariously ruined by them.
@PaulBC 45 & chrislawson @59
Regarding “A well armed society is a polite society”: ask them if they have ever watched a single Western in their entire lives.
Then, perhaps suggest they watch “Romeo and Juliet” or do a smidgeon of research on what life expectancy was like in the Renaissance when upper-class men walked around with deadly weapons dangling from their hips at all times.
Perhaps a few Norse eddas?
Or if they want something more modern, maybe try “Hamilton.”
Perhaps they could look around for elderly drug smugglers and mafia figures?
Then, grant them their point. In a well-armed society, their chances of dying a violent death may be vastly higher. But hey, at least folks will be polite before they kill you to death.
Gorzki, #27, the problem is, his action belied his words. After firing at the first victim, he called a friend and conversed for a time. At no point did he even assess the injured man, attempt to access his claimed first aid kit or even take a pulse.
That all said, I hold his mother the most responsible. He cannot lawfully own any kind of firearm, as the minimum age is set by federal law at 18 for long guns, 21 for handguns and NFA firearms. At age 17, his reasoning skills are still developing, yet his mother not only allowed him access to a firearm that is essentially a weapon of war, but then drove him to the city! Then, the utterly predictable occurred and now, two men are dead, another horrifically wounded.
I say horrifically for a reason, I am a veteran and I know damned well precisely what effects a 5.56×45 NATO round, derived from the .223 sporting round, does to a human body. I’ve also treated casualties and that damned rifle was nothing more than a hindrance to treating my patient, as it became every unimaginable way of being in the way, hampering movement and accessing the patient. I eventually took to having one of my peers hold both the casualty’s weapon and my own, just to get the goddamned piece of unmitigated shit out of my way!
Everything, of course, that gets in the way is a piece of shit… Especially, used sharps.
This entire sad episode could have been prevented by his mother simply refusing to transport him with a firearm. Now, the mother will likely also endure some investigative scrutiny and probable charges, all because she refused to do her parental duty and refuse to place her immature son into an untenable position. Her son will go to prison, might even face the death penalty, families are shattered and the wounded man likely experiencing significant disability.
I’m sure that some might object to my characterization of a semiautomatic AR-15 as a weapon of war. To them, I remind them that we fired in semiautomatic for precise fire and to conserve ammunition. Nothing is worse in life than running out of ammunition during a rather stimulating firefight!
With the word stimulating really meaning, I was amazed that I didn’t soil my underwear each and every damned time.
I’ve also not related the precise terminal effects of that specific round and other types of bullets as a conscious choice to avoid causing harm. The video describes what the round did to one patient and that was quite accurate enough. A rule of thumb is, if the weapon and its round can kill a deer, it can kill a human.
Had I attended that kind of event, I’d have brought my cane so that I could walk without falling and my medical bag.
The weasel words justifying this juvenile terrorist now give justification for misunderstood, bullied black folk to pick up their AR-15s and open fire. Sauce for the goose as they say.
Dude had an AR 15 despite being underage = Crime 1
He crossed a state line with said gun = Crime 2
Yet somehow that doesn’t make him a criminal, but black folks doing perfectly legal things should have known better and have only themselves to blame for being shot by the police.
Seeing those headlines makes me want to headbutt a wall.
It’s about supporting “law enforcement”, not about enforcing laws. And it’s not even worth pointing out the irony, because people who use “law enforcement” to refer to police don’t care about equal justice under the law and never have.
PaulBC @65:
It’s the same sort of abuse of language as the mantra “support the troops”, which usually means “support the government sending them off to die in a pointless/illegal war”.
The Progressive Secular Humanist blog got invaded by a bunch of christian terrorist trolls going on about the supposed criminal records of the victims and how the shooter was “defending” himself despite going there for the express purpose to kill.
It’s Orwell’s Newspeak.
GOP family values = tax cuts for corporations and the 1%
GOP fiscal responsibility = the largest annual deficits in modern history
Pro life = forced birthers and female slavers
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
@Giliell, #63, I recall reading that his mother drove him across state lines, so conspiracy is crime #3.
If the mother did indeed transport him, she likely facilitated his unlawful possession of a firearm and crime #4, unlawful open carry of said firearm.
I’m sure that the DA is using tons of toner for additional charges.
Idiots are calling him a hero for protecting his community, which is odd, as he lived in Illinois, not Wisconsin. I’m in York County, PA. That’d be like me calling Baltimore, Maryland my community.
Damned shame, because now, his entire life is in the dumpster and two men are dead, one horrifically wounded.
Datum: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/christian-crowdfunding-rittenhouse/
wzrd1@69, Careful! There is no known reliable confirmation she did so, and apparently many of the claims she did drive him and his gun so he could then murder people are extrapolations from an unrelated photograph. From Snopes, Photographs show the parents of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old accused of killing two people and injuring a third at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin: “False“. They go on to note (my added emboldening):
WTMJ-Milwaukee:
That friend, Dominic Black, is the person he called immediately after the first shooting. Video shows him telling Black “I shot somebody” while leaving the scene of the car lot, just before the next two shootings on the road. Black was also in the earlier video showing Rittenhouse punch a girl (arguing with his sister about who knows what) and fighting with several others then.
I figure that if they came together and Rittenhouse called Black when shit started to hit the fan, then they probably left together as well.
By the way, I don’t believe the lawyer’s claim that the gun didn’t cross state lines. Rittenhouse apparently had this gun for a long time, and it didn’t just teleport itself there that day. I mean, It’s conceivable that he had an identical-looking gun at home in Illinois but somehow gained access to another one in Wisconsin on the day in question. However, (1) that’s way more complicated, and (2) it still doesn’t explain what happened or who gave him the gun he actually used.