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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

>Having watched the videos, it was plainly obvious that in each case, Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense.

my understanding is that you can't claim self-defense if you initiated violence yourself. Threatening unarmed people with a gun, pointing it at them is a credible threat of violence that the people have the right to defend themselves from, and that is what they tried to do in particular by chasing that gun wielding moron away. Unfortunately that aspect seems to have been totally overlooked.

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>Threatening unarmed people with a gun

a) he never threatened anyone. In fact, he demonstrated better gun safety than, say, a Hollywood actor/producer 3 times his age.

b) how can you claim the crowd was unarmed? Of the 3 people that stuck around to be searched, 2 of them had weapons. A skateboard used as a bludgeon. And a Glock pistol that was drawn from concealment and pointed at his head.

Except he never pointed a gun at anybody that wasn’t already threatening/chasing him.

pointing gun isn't necessary. As we know from for example many police shootings mere presence of a gun even at a minimally tense situation is usually already perceived as a threat even by well trained and used to guns people.

> pointing gun isn't necessary.

If you threaten a person with bodily harm, I think it is reasonable to point a gun at them to get them to stop. Would you voluntarily get bashed in the head with a skateboard if you were in that position?

if you're an active shooter in a populated place i think you're extremely lucky to get only slightly bashed in the head as normally much worse things would happen to you.

Again, cause and effect backwards here. He was attacked previous to any trigger pulling.

>Again, cause and effect backwards here.

cause - the guy shoots an unarmed man and just coldly walks away from it. No victim check, no attempt to render first aid, no reporting to and waiting for police and emergency services... nothing what is reasonably expected in the situation of self-defense.

effect - reasonable perception that it is a killer on the lose, a threat to defend from.

This is an argument for justifying the following attacks on Kyle. Kyle acting in self defence does not imply that Huber was not acting in self defence.

Using police are a bad example, because they aren't held to the same standard as non-police. Whether that should be or not is debatable, but it's not debatable that there are clearly different standards. Police are routinely determined justified in killing people based on the possibility of a weapon, those Rittenhouse shot not only had weapons, but showed intent to use them.

i'm not talking about standards. I'm talking about human perception of gun danger and use as an example well established perception of gun danger by the people known to be well accustomed to guns and associated dangers.

>those Rittenhouse shot not only had weapons, but showed intent to use them.

these people were defending themselves and others around from Rittenhouse after he shot an unarmed man and just walked away not checking on the victim, nor waiting for police like one would do in a bona fide self-defense, and that made him to be reasonably perceived as an active shooter that is a threat to anybody around. Thus he created that violent situation of him being a threat and necessitating a defense against him, and he shot the people who were defending themselves and others from him. One shouldn't be able to claim self-defense in such situation.

There doesn't need to be a clear "bad guy" in every situation. Situations can escalate and get out of hand without any individual actors with bad intentions. So it's entirely plausible that the people charging Rittenhouse thought he was a terrorist and wanted to disarm him, and it's entirely plausible that Rittenhouse feared for his life when he shot them. To illustrate my point:

Suppose there are two people at two corners of a dark alleyway. They both hear a gunshot towards the center of the alley and draw their pistols in self-defence. They take a few steps and now see each other holding a gun. Each one raises his gun at the other, thinking that's the shooter. One fires and kills the other. AFAIK it would be justified self-defense

There are a lot more layers to the case than you would originally think. Like an obligation to flee if reasonable to do so etc. Legal Eagle on YT did a great breakdown of it all.

It's not as simple as "can't claim self-defence if you initiated violence yourself".

>Like an obligation to flee if reasonable to do so etc.

If you're targeted personally i suppose. When the violence isn't targeted your running away wouldn't change the situation if there are other people around who can be shot. That reminds about that veteran who attacked the shooter several years ago at the Oregon college - he could have fled i guess, yet he didn't. Did he had an obligation to flee? I don't think anybody there entertained even for a moment such nonsense idea as the shooter's self-defense against the veteran who attacked him and got wounded in that fight. In Kenosha though the shooter shot the guys who tried to stop him (and from any point of view he was the active shooter to be stopped as he didn't stay with his first victim calling/waiting for police and rendering help to the victim as one would do in a true self-defense situation, and as an active shooter he was a threat to everybody, a threat that the people have the right to defend themselves from), and it somehow got successfully sold as self-defense on his part.

Oregon does NOT have a stand your ground law. If that were the only statute, he'd be guilty of murder (showing that such a law is not well thought out). My guess is they have another law (like most states do) that allows coming to the defense of someone else.

"a true self-defense situation", according to who?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

> Legal Eagle on YT did a great breakdown of it all.

I strongly disagree. He left out some very important details from the video. Whether by accident or not, doesn't really matter in this case, IMO. (I know he issued corrections/clarifications in the comments, but most people are not gonna read those)

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