Wisconsin is one of those states where you can walk around with a firearm without a license, as long as it is visible.
The theory being that a “good citizen” carries his weapon in full view and in full transparency, while a criminal will want to hide it. So it takes a license for a concealed weapon, but none if the weapon is shown.
I’ve been ordered to put a beer in a bag on the way out of a convenience store in Texas. Because you see, the laws open carry (openly wear) apply to the Smith and Wessons, but not to the Budweiser.
So don’t blame the jury for acquitting Kyle Rittenhouse on Friday. He enforced the fairly broad laws of that state on self-defense. Rather, the question is: how come a 17 year old teenager went to play police in front of a crowd with a fully loaded AR-15 without it being illegal?
Whole swathes of this country tolerate, encourage or celebrate improvised vigilantes who will play cops and shoot unarmed people.
The case of Rittenhouse is an illustration of this pathological, but legal parallel justice.
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In the summer of 2020, across the United States, Black Lives Matter protests followed the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. In Kenosha, a town of 100,000 inhabitants in Wisconsin, a young black man was riddled with bullets by the police at the end of August. Protests and riots followed.
This is where the teenager Rittenhouse comes into the picture, who has come to “protect” a car salesman with others.
There is breakage that night in town. The riot is present, and many fires break out in the streets.
Rittenhouse finds himself in the street in front of a first person who chases him by threatening him… without a weapon. While backing up, he shoots him four times with military-type bullets. A little further on, while running, he stumbles; a man hits him with a skateboard on the head; he stands up and kills him. Finally, a third man, armed this one, takes aim at him; Rittenhouse shoots him and injures him.
Faced with two murder charges, one charge of attempted murder and charges of dangerous use of a firearm, he pleaded self-defense. And he convinced the jury.
Why ? Because Wisconsin law allows you to defend yourself against a threat of injury, including with a firearm.
Even if it was he, while walking around with an AR-15, who caused the panic, he who prompted the demonstrators to try to subdue him.
The jury apparently concluded that he sincerely believed he was in danger, which justified his “reply”.
Is it delusional? Yes. And no. In the restricted logic of the prosecution, it holds: what counted in the trial was the state of mind of the accused who was taken to task, who was afraid of being disarmed. Not the relevance of his presence, at 17, with an assault weapon and bullets “full metal jacket”, where lies all the weakness of this affair.
PHOTO ALEX KENT, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
A man celebrates after the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse outside the courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The jury saw scenes from the event, aerial footage taken by drones, which showed the relative chaos of this evening.
I said that the accused convinced the jury of his feeling of being threatened; it was not even necessary: all the accused had to do was raise a reasonable doubt as to his fear of being hurt by the demonstrators. The debate was restricted to this question.
The gun debate has grown so crazy in the United States that this acquittal is being celebrated everywhere on the right as a formidable victory against lawlessness, for law and order. This is not the first nor the last case of private vigilantes acquitted after killing unarmed people. Every cause lost by prosecutors prepares for the next legalized assassination, and degrades the rule of law – where the monopoly of legal violence is supposed to belong to the police.
PHOTO BRENDAN MCDERMID, REUTERS
Tears roll down the cheeks of Annie Hysell, Kenosha resident and good friend of victim Anthony Huber, as she reacts to the verdict in Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial in court.
We are already blaming the judge, we are blaming the jury everywhere.
But from the moment when the carrying of an assault weapon is authorized, everything is in place for slippages and massacres that will be deplored under the name of “self-defense”, but which will be cleared by justice.
Another case is before a jury, that of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery, in Georgia, which is coming to an end. This time, three men claiming to make a “citizen arrest” killed this unarmed young black man. They are charged with murder. Will they also be acquitted?
This is where many parts of the United States have come to. More than trivialization; the official defense of self-justice, its incorporation into law.
The unrestricted carrying of a weapon for all leads to this terminal and paranoid logic: legalized preventive murder.