Kyle Rittenhouse walks free. Is anyone surprised?

Not really.
Would have been had I not followed the trial, but since I did, and I saw the proceedings, no, can’t say I am.

I wasn’t surprised, but I was sure disappointed.

@rebbel Yeah, me too. He had a great defense team and the prosecution were a bunch of bumbling amateurs.

Not surprised but very sad.

Can’t come at people with guns. I don’t give a fuck who should have been there and who shouldn’t have been there, you have a gun and come at someone with a gun, bye bye fucker

Not surprised. Self defense. Case Closed. Goodbye.

Nope, not surprised. Everything I’ve read about this case indicates that it was self-defense. The prosecution did not prove that Rittenhouse was the aggressor (the only situation in which he could’ve been found guilty of homicide).

Wisconsin is a gun loving state. No one from Wisconsin was surprised. I had many in my fb feed saying to expect an acquittal.

I’m hoping it’s a quiet night. I live just a few blocks from where we had rioting here in Madison, WI last year after Kyle murdered the two. The grocery store I work at closed early and our city had a curfew.

So Kyle Rittenhouse travelled from Illinois to Wisconsin with a semi-automatic weapon to defend himself and ended up killing two people. It seems perfectly reasonable. I don’t see what all the fuss is about.

@flutherother My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, is a really screwed up country.

@janbb My gast is flabbered.

Somewhat, yes. I’d wager if he ever tries it again, someone will shoot him and claim it was self defense. And because of his prior conduct, whoever shoots him will also get off but the trial won’t be so lengthy.

White privilege.

@gorillapaws Yep. You can’t tell me a minority in the same situation wouldn’t be found guilty.
But with a Democrat in the White House, Kyle became a poster boy for the Right.

Anyone who really followed that case, looked at the evidence and still puts Rittenhouse up on a pedestal as a hero or describes him as a psycho vigilante trigger happy murderer is ideologically motivated and biased. The vast numbers of people who see this as black and white scare me more than anything I have seen in recent years. Current political ideology is a sickness worse than any pandemic.

I predict he’ll either join up with some white supremacy groups or he’ll get his ass beat within the next year.

Not surprised, just disappointed. I agree withg @jca – someone’s going to beat him up soon. The kid won’t be alive in 5 years, one way or another.

The kid is also going to have one a hell of a time going to college and finding a job.

An openly biased judge, and an historically, perhaps intentionally so, incompetent prosecutor?
No one could have foreseen this outcome!

A white guy that travelled to another state with an AR, to play vigilante and hunt protesters, clearly a patriotic hero.
A black kid with a bag of skittles, definitely a dangerous thug.
Your “country” is fucked.

Not really. He was defending himself. Trying to put together a case that made him out to be the next Oswald was a foolish move by the state. It was the left trying to pander to the left. They wanted him to be the demon and so they went for a ridiculous charge that can’t be proven by the evidence. Had they tried him for a manslaughter charge or something like that, they might have prevailed. They didn’t, and they lost.

Ya’ll need to cope big time.

Grosskruetz or how ever you spell it drove twice the distance Kyle did. “BuT iT wAs AcRoSs StAtE lInEs” LMAO

Well, I was. I didn’t follow the courtroom drama, but I knew what it was about. Guess I’m still just too naive and trusting.

@Jeruba “I didn’t follow the courtroom drama, but I knew what it was about.”

If you were not following the courtroom drama then you probably really did not know what it was about. Once I started watching my position on this changed.

I was surprised. The the general liberal “news” media pretty much had the gun shooter convicted before the trial. Even “the big guy” said the the shooter was a white supremacist when there’s no evidence of that at all.

Anyway this is still a warning for all the people who own guns. Yea you may buy guns and ammunition. You may even buy a big pile of guns. It’s still your right to do so. But if you use a gun in self defense then be ready to fight like hell for your freedom in the court of law.

^Well, yeah. Killing someone is a big deal and we have to be sure it was justified.

@Jeruba crossing state lines has no bearing on anything. If you want to get technical, most of the protesters came from out of state. There were 175 arrests of protesters that night and 102 of them were from out of state. One of the people that attacked Rittenhouse, Rosenbaum, was from Waco Tx. Why is there crickets about that? Oh yeah…it has no bearing on things.

@Demosthenes If killing someone is a big deal and we need to be sure it was justified, where was this screaming for justice when the CHOP area in Portland was killing people? They were made out by that same liberal media to be “peaceful” protesters that were “protecting” people. When someone was killed, that same liberal media swept it under the rug. You certainly have a different amount and tenor of reporting when it is the lefties doing the killing.

I’m not talking about reporting. I’m talking about having to defend yourself in a court of law, which yes, you should be prepared to do if you kill someone.

I stand by what I said.

@Demosthenes I understand. But it was largely the outrage pushed by the media that made the prosecution take up the case. Rittenhouse was not arrested that night. He went home and they tracked him back to there and he was arrested the next day. I’m not against arresting and trying someone for shooting and/or killing another person. I’m all for it. But I have to question why those that shot and killed people in CHOP were not pursued, why the media didn’t have outrage about it and why it was handled so very differently. As @gondwanalon said, the media had him convicted before the trial even started. Why wasn’t that same attitude brought against those in CHOP?

The point is, there are two sets of justice: one for righties and one for lefties. And the difference is the political pressure brought to bear on the cases and this includes biased media coverage. Would you agree that those that killed people in CHOP should have had to defend themselves in trial? And given the apparent huge nature of the crime, shouldn’t it have been broadcast far and wide with all the pundits denouncing the shooters?

I don’t know all the details of the shootings that occurred around the CHOP/CHAZ last summer, but from what I could read, most of those shootings are still unsolved. If there were suspects or known perpetrators, they should’ve been arrested, yes. Rittenhouse generated more media attention because it was a perfect representative of the “culture wars”. I’m not defending the media’s role in this case, but I’m sticking to the position that he should’ve been arrested and had to defend killing two people. If it’s self-defense, then the evidence should show that and he should go free (which is what happened).

@Demosthenes Many of those killing people at CHOP/CHAZ were caught on video. No one ever sought them out. And that, too, is representative of the “culture wars”. One side is demonized and the other is not. One side gets away with murder without even having to face trial, the other gets dragged into court and is convicted by a biased media. THAT is culture war. As I said, if you are willing to carry a gun and you have to use it, you should be able to defend your actions. Any reasonable gun owner knows that. Because it is highly likely that you WILL end up in court over it.

Who didn’t seek them out? The Seattle Police Department?

@Demosthenes The Seattle police were told to stand down. The Mayor told the police they were not to enter the CHOP area under any circumstances.

I have this if anyone is interested to hear a local Wisconsin perspective.

“Hi folks,

We’re still feeling pretty upset by the Rittenhouse acquittal, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to figure out what we can do as a state to reduce acts of foolhardy, toxic-masculine vigilantism steeped in racism that result in people being shot and killed.

Last Wednesday when recording the Up North Podcast before the acquittal, Pat, Sarah, and Kirk spoke to the District Attorney of Portage County, Louis Molepske, and Keith Findley, a UW-Madison Law School Professor, about the Rittenhouse case.

Among other issues, both guests discussed how hard it is under Wisconsin law to prosecute someone who claims self-defense, and just how easy Wisconsin has made it for people to carry semi-automatic weapons (which are completely unnecessary for hunting) around in public.” Minoqua Brewing Company

https://www.upnorthpodcast.com/episodes/ep-24-murderous-vigilante-or-self-defense/

https://www.facebook.com/43819229306/posts/10161309320349307/?d=n

@Jonsblond I thought you said Wisconsin was a racist state.

^ We have a deep history of racism here and Wisconsin is the worst state for black people. We do have people here who aren’t racist. Just because I said it’s racist doesn’t mean everyone is. I know you aren’t that obtuse.

I saw a lot of it. I listened to all of the attorneys analyzing the difficulty of prosecuting a “self-defense” defense, how the jury had no choice but to follow the law.

And can we please use all the same criteria to re-evaluate the convictions of all those women, sitting in prison, who defended themselves against violently abusive partners, who not only had a history of physically abusing them, hospitalizing them, and verbally, explicitly, threatening to kill them?

Not that that would work, the white boy in a racist area is just too charmed.

I was relieved since he obviously didn’t murder anyone. Witnesses and video made his case for him…............and then there was the help from the prosecution’s witnesses.

@seawulf575 my comment should also read: Wisconsin is racist. Many of us are trying to change it.

@canidmajor I think that self defense could/should be applied to women that have offed their abusive partners. The only time you start hitting a gray area is when a woman purposely sets about to kill her spouse…plans it, sets it up, and executes it (and him!). That sort of planning shows premeditation. But if there is a history of abuse and a man comes home one day and starts deciding to show the little lady who’s boss and she shoots him dead, I would say that is self defense. Why not? She has the history to show that when he gets to a certain point he is going to physically harm her.

Of course it looks even better if she, like Rittenhouse, was trying to get away when it happened

Fresh perspective…
One of his personal security team has just done an interview. He saw the whole trial, and Kyle, and mother and sisters at home. He has a perspective on the big picture that only a select few had.
I highly recommend