BOTH of these options do not make for a good look on yourself.
Literally yes? Can you drop the strawman and whataboutism in an attempt to derail things and maybe focus on the discussion at hand?
He saw Kyle, an active shooter, drew on him to get him to stop shooting people, and so Kyle just gets to shoot him?
EDIT: This flamewar is not worth it (what did I expect in this thread?), but just please try to remember the lessons Batman tries to teach us about vigilante justice (it just encourages more crime by making 'justice' a personal endeavor subject to the follies of the individual).
Is your argument that he was passive or that guns don’t shoot?
Grosskreutz had chased after him after he had shot Rosenbaum, but Grosskreutz did not witness the shooting himself - none of Rittenhouse's pursuers had. He got close enough to Rittenhouse to ask Rittenhouse where he was running. Rittenhouse doesn't turn around and shoot Grosskreutz, but instead tells Grosskreutz he's going to the police, to which Grosskreutz yells 'stop him'.[0] The fact is, Rittenhouse's pursuers didn't think he was an 'active shooter', they saw that he was running away, and didn't want to let him get away, and were trying to take justice into their own hands. And in fact, if Grosskreutz actually had thought that Rittenhouse were an 'active shooter', why didn't he shoot him right then?
[0]: https://twitter.com/AntifaWatch2/status/1299853616757583872
[0]Mr. Rittenhouse seems to make a phone call and then flees the scene. Several people chase him, some shouting, “That’s the shooter!”
As Mr. Rittenhouse is running, he trips and falls to the ground. He fires four shots as three people rush toward him. One person appears to be hit in the chest and falls to the ground. Another, who is carrying a handgun, is hit in the arm and runs away.
Mr. Rittenhouse’s gunfire is mixed in with the sound of at least 16 other gunshots that ring out during this time.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenos...
Didn't say that, I said the pursuers were not a witness to the shooting themselves. That is, they didn't see it happen for themselves. For example, Grosskreutz's story:
> Gaige Grosskreutz testified that he was filming the protest as a legal observer for the American Civil Liberties Union on a Facebook livestream. Shortly before midnight Grosskreutz said he heard gunshots to the south and observed Rittenhouse running in his direction[86] on Sheridan Road.[87] Grosskreutz said he ran alongside Rittenhouse and asked "Hey, what are you doing. You shot somebody?"[86]
> And to be a pedant, he was only drawn on after the second murder, even though they were in close succession.
It wasn't a murder, and it as for 'close succession', that's subjective; Rittenhouse had ran for two blocks after he shot Rosenbaum, and Grosskreutz had already been pursuing Rittenhouse (that's when he recorded the video in the tweet). Grosskreutz would have witnessed Rittenhouse shoot Huber, but he would have also seen Huber slam a skateboard into Rittenhouse's head and attempt to grab his rifle before Rittenhouse had shot Huber since Grosskreutz had been pursuing Rittenhouse prior to this. So 1) Grosskreutz didn't witness Rosenbaum's shooting, 2) Grosskreutz would have witnessed Huber attacking Rittenhouse before Rittenhouse shot Huber. I.e., he would have known nothing about the first shooting, and the second shooting he would have witnessed the entire self-defence case as it happened, giving zero reasonable indication that Rittenhouse was an 'active shooter'.
Please just try to limit the amount of time you spend encouraging people to show up armed to protests, or even riots if you want to call them that.
Who am I kidding? Never mind.
Dumb, baseless assumption from you not reading what I wrote correctly. Grosskreutz and the other pursuers didn't personally witness Rittenhouse shoot Rosenbaum. If he had, why did Grosskreutz ask Rittenhouse if he had just shot somebody?
> Please just try to limit the amount of time you spend encouraging people to show up armed to protests, or even riots if you want to call them that.
You're obviously not arguing in good faith.
And if you don't, you're justified in being shot while pursuing him?
What were they supposed to do, let him flee?
No he didn't. He had just defended himself against two assailants, while trying to flee. He was never, at any point in time, an "active shooter".
An "active shooter" is "an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearms and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims."[0]
He had a pattern of selection. Kyle shot and neutralized those who were trying to kill him (or cause grievious bodily harm). That is, by definition, self-defense, not an "active shooter" event.
[0] https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/active_shooter_booklet.p...
QED.
Let's play hypothetical here. School shooter is bullied and hit in a fight. He shoots bully dead and starts running. He then shoots two people tackling him.
Is he not an active shooter?
Why are you doing such mental gymnastics to lionize this kid? You can debate over whether he should go to jail or not, but the reality is he extra-judicially killed 2 people. Doesn't that make you feel weird to defend that, even if you disagree politically with his victims?
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.
Or would you be completely within your moral rights to defend yourself from the shooter, by any means at your disposal?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not waiting around for that determination seems to have worked out pretty well for Rittenhouse. He's both not dead, and a free man.
At that point, when your life is threatened, act, and look to ensure the involvement of medics and the law once you are safe.
I have no doubt that he, too, felt threatened for his life by an armed gunman at some point in that altercation.
I also assume that, as the saying goes, either of the people that Rittenhouse killed would have also rather faced a trial by twelve, than be carried by six.
This seems to be a bad faith argument, given that Kyle was being physically and brutally attacked when he correctly responded in self-defense. Quite different from your "logical conclusion".
This kind of very easy dramatic escalation is exactly why carrying rifles around on the street at all should be illegal. But that's a separate question from the one of whether according to the set of laws we actually live under, Rittenhouse is guilty of murder or not.
Had the facts gone even a little differently, one person would have been dead, and again, it's unlikely that anyone would have been found at fault.