Hacker News Reader

Comment by monkeybutton | Hacker News Reader

I'm not european, but I'm not American either, and the case is weird. In isolation the outcome is correct but take a step back and do you not see what is happening to your country? Weird is an understatement. The entire set and setting for it shouldn't be happening in the first place. But it is.

View on HN

I am european, but no longer living in Europe (or America) and I can't help but agree.

Kyle Rittenhouse isn't guilty of murder under US law, and the killings have been determined to be self defence. OK then.

But you have a young person being driven to a counter-protest by a parent, picking up a firearm on the way, ostensibly to use the threat of deadly force to help prevent property damage to some businesses as part of some sort of vigilante militia. There is just so much wrong with this picture before we even get to the (inevitable IMHO) tragedy.

Indeed. My point of view is as a parent of a 16-year old myself. Kyle's parent needs to be locked up here. She's the guilty party, as the supposed guardian of this child. Kyle, defending himself in that bizarro situation, and given current law in that state, was innocent. But there's no world in which a parent should allow that situation to EVER occur. If we dropped a bunch of armed teenagers in the middle of a riot, we should expect mayhem and death, no matter what their individual politics are. We have a serious problem in this country and it isn't Kyle Rittenhouse.

The world isn’t neatly 18 or under 18. Grown children who were aged adults attacked a teen openly carrying a rifle. The guilty party is the aggressors who decided to lawlessly attack a person with every right to defend themselves. He went to administer first aid and was seen cleaning graffiti. She raised him well.

lol he didn't go to render first aid. He was there to be a tough guy. I agree with the outcome of the trial but let's not actually be naive enought to believe that made up garbage.

There’s video of him doing both

If you do have a child who is 16, you might understand. They are not ready to make these kinds of decisions. They are unbearably righteous, whether righty or lefty. They will go in and kill and be killed with whatever weapon you provide them. The worst thing you can do is to give them a weapon and put them in a war, unless you DO want death and destruction. For those downvoting me because they believe he is guilty, clearly he was going in with many motivations in mind, but probably thought he was doing the right thing. How can we hold a minor accountable without looking at his guardians? Don't parents hold responsibility for their children?

>But you have a young person being driven to a counter-protest by a parent

This is where I stopped reading, because you're incorrect about basic facts of the case:

https://news.yahoo.com/kyle-rittenhouses-mother-did-not-1838...

OK, as usual, someone picks up on one of the least important bits to intimate that the whole point must be wrong. Perhaps if you'd read past that you might have been able to address the theme rather than one of the less important parts.

OK great, the mother wasn't involved, TIL. But the rest stands, there is so much wrong with the whole picture leading up to the (inevitable) tragedy.

You were incorrect about the thing which was the thesis of your comment! Not just incorrect but reality was in the exact opposite state as your comment portrayed it!

When a person manages to be wrong so efficiently, why on Earth should they feel entitled to partial credit for supporting arguments to a factually incorrect main idea?

> You were incorrect about the thing which was the thesis of your comment!

Then you misunderstood the thesis of my comment. Who provided the transport was the least part of it.

The main idea is that the picture is pretty damn f'd up when teenage civillians are going armed to protect private property at/from a protest.

That his mother didn't drive him makes it slightly less messed up, but the overall picture of US society it paints is pretty much the same giant WTF as it was before.

But the f'd up part is the property-destroying riots, not the citizens trying to protect the community. Take away the 2nd, there'd be more damage. Take away the 1st, everything would be fine.

> But the f'd up part is the property-destroying riots, not the citizens trying to protect the community.

I disagree. It's all a huge mess. Armed citizens setting themselves up as effective vigilante defence forces is terrible both for the circumstances that lead there, and the action itself. It really looks like a broken society, and is something I'd expect in far less developed countries.

> Take away the 2nd, there'd be more damage

Maybe, but maybe there would be more people alive.

Why is that what’s wrong with the picture, and not the larger issue that rioters were allowed to burn parts of a city to the ground for days? This case is also far from the only violence that took place there.

Yes, we are aware. There is more ideology behind this case than just guns, for most people. My perspective: There has been an increase in violent rioting and looting across the country. The city governments are largely complicit in this and refuse to stop it from happening. The police are restricted by the city governments from performing their duty as public defenders. This unlawful behavior — and I don't just mean rioting, but also simple crimes like shoplifting distinct from any protest; cities such as Seattle have declined to prosecute all such crimes for a long while now — has become so ubiquitous as to be obviously trending toward ruination of communities. In brief, small business has already started to leave these areas, and large businesses are shuttering as well. They simply cannot remain open in the face of unchecked crime.

Now, when the state fails to uphold its obligations and the social contract is broken, what happens is that people either flee the area, or they turn to vigilantism. Doing nothing is a privilege few can afford. The people living in these communities do not want to flee. They have tried calling the police, but the police do not come. They have tried voting, but it doesn't work. They hear of another impending riot. They decide to defend their community. This is the setting of the Rittenhouse saga, and many other such sagas soon to come. Yes, it is a 'weird' situation in a first world country, but it is not weird at all in the annals of history. The case resonates emotionally about more than guns — he is either a hero who stood up when no one else would to stop this madness and defended himself from the violent hordes, or he is an instigator who inserted himself into a lawful anti-racism event and joyfully gunned down the peaceful protesters.

Well yes, people shouldn’t have been allowed to burn down a city, loot, and commit violent acts for days on end. Of course that’s weird, this case is really just a small part of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com