I agree that events leading up to the shooting were problematic. If respected media commentators had not glorified riots or villianized the justified police shooting of Jacob Blake, or if the Mayor of Kenosha had requested further National Guard in advance of the second night of riots, or if the police had not abandoned downtown Kenosha to a mob armed with rifles and handguns, none of this would have happened.

The immediate consequence of the shooting was an end to destructive riots in Kenosha. As an American, I hope future consequences include a tapering-off of destructive pointless riots. If you come to my town, threaten to kill a kid defending local homes and businesses, light a bunch of the town on fire and then pursue and attempt to kill said kid, you deserve whatever happens to you. If Rittenhouse hadn't been armed, he'd likely now be dead.

> This is not how you run a civilized society. The problem is not so much the trial as it is the events leading up to it and the fact that kids walk around with powerful weapons.

You may be right, and personally I agree with you that bringing a rifle to a partially violent protest should be illegal, and that Rittenhouse is no hero or role model, but nothing you said has anything to do with whether this was murder or self-defense. Even if his possession of the gun had been 100% illegal, that would be a different charge.

It feels like you're conflating several questions: (1) whether Rittenhouse is a good or bad person; (2) whether it should be legal for people to walk around at night with a giant rifle; (3) whether what happened in this particular instance was murder or self-defense. All three of these are actually completely unrelated questions.

> The problem is not so much the trial as it is the events leading up to it and the fact that kids walk around with powerful weapons.

Do you also feel that way about the armed vigilantes on the other side of the incident? Was it ok that Gage Groskreutz was menacing people with his gun, and was never charged with a crime, and never even had his gun confiscated?

There were many armed civilians that night with guns, why are you only concerned about Rittenhouse? Is armed vigilantism if a militia says that it is "anti fascist"

And you are ignoring the events that led up to a kid walking around with powerful weapon in the middle of a riot. In your other post, that is now flagged, you talked about how other countries have a "monopoly on violence". That monopoly was lost in Kenosha when the cops didn't intervene and the governor of the state refused to call in the national guard to put in an end to the riots.

Dangerous political gamesmanship between Trump and various mayors and governors got people killed, destroyed a ton of property, and has done permanent damage to the social fabric of this country.