Kyle Rittenhouse is Being Tried for the Wrong Crime

If Kyle Rittenhouse gets off with nothing but a misdemeanor, it will only be because his actions are being held up against the wrong standard.

He will presumably be convicted of being a minor in possession of a firearm (because: duh, and god help us if we can’t even convict him of the thing he’s so obviously guilty of). Killing two people and grievously wounding a third may very well be deemed officially acceptable by a court of law, because our laws on self-defense are so woefully inadequate for a situation like this.

They don’t make an exception for willfully naïve provocation.

Other laws do. We just don’t invoke them. Our conception of what is okay is like a funhouse mirror of morality.

Rittenhouse is like the guy in a bar getting up in someone’s face, yelling “What you gonna do about it?! What you gonna do about it, pussy?!!!!” until the other guy takes the first swing. As long as the first guy never threatens violence or raises his hands, it’s the second guy who commits assault. It’s not against the law to be an asshole.

It’s also not against the law to walk around with an AR-15 in the middle of a riot. While it might be against the law of common sense and basic decency, only in America is it supposed to be seen as a neutral act. “Oh, don’t be alarmed. It’s just some random person armed to the teeth. Wait, no, I mean a responsible gun owner. Concerned citizen? What am I allowed to say again?”

The worst kind of violence is always masked in benevolence. Care and concern made me do it, your honor! Not a desire to exercise power over others. Not a homicidal will to power. That’s Rittenhouse’s explanation. He was there to render first aid. The gun was just for protection.

He also claimed to be there to protect property, which begs the question: how exactly? Clearly not by shooting people. Oh wait…

Never mind that he had no training in first aid. Never mind that no one asked him to defend their car dealership. He was a self-appointed EMT cum sheriff. I have no doubt he walked around like he was in charge. He wears his arrogance on his face, but even if you reserve judgment on his resting smug face, his t-shirt after his arrest (“Free as Fuck”) tells you all you need to know about his perception of his place in society. He is above the law.

In that context, I imagine how alarming it must have been for his first victim (yes, victim — sorry, Judge Schroder: I get to call a spade a spade in this forum) to see an armed brat approaching. Only in our twisted conception of individual liberty is someone supposed to view a civilian openly carrying a high-caliber firearm as not posing a threat. That’s what the law asked of Rosenbaum, even if Rittenhouse acted like he had a greater right than Rosenbaum to behave a certain way on that night in that parking lot. I imagine him questioning Rosenbaum like a cop. “What are you doing here? Step away from the vehicle. Keep your hands where I can see them.” Just a hunch. Glad I wasn’t there to confirm. I don’t blame Rosenbaum for trying to disarm him, but once he did, he fulfilled Rittenhouse's fondest wish: “Just give me a reason.”

It may prove to be reason enough in the eyes of the law. Pity the jury having to rule on the letter of said law. Viewed narrowly, he had cause to defend himself. Here’s the rub: Grosskreutz did, too. That’s where things get really surreal. How could it be that two individuals can be justly defending themselves from…each other? Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two rights can make a wrong. In the midst of a tense environment and confusion, our laws on gun ownership and self-defense could allow one innocent person to kill another. Is this — everyone shooting everyone else in a self-perpetuating cycle of gun violence — the glorious future the gun rights folks envision for us? What a utopia! If only George Washington were alive to see how things panned out.

Other laws provide a way out of this stalemate, if we want to take it. Rittenhouse should be tried for breaking the prohibition against armed paramilitary activity. As soon as he joined with a group of fellow armed civilians and assumed the role of law enforcement, he was engaged in an activity that is not legally protected. In that context, the provocation of roaming the streets of Kenosha armed, ostensibly to serve and protect, becomes much clearer.

Of course, we won’t prosecute him for it, because the unstated rule is: we let white guys do this sort of thing. They’re the ones that the gun laws are written for. It’s people of color for whom firearm enhancement laws are written. For the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers, getting together to play dress-up and then show up at rallies kitted out like Army Rangers to provide “security” is somehow just fine.

We’re supposed to be used to the sight of armed white men. It’s not a threat. It’s the natural order of things. They’re supposed to be free to do whatever they wish. Nothing to see here.

I don’t accept that. I’m tired of the unwritten rules of white male power, still very much in effect. No matter what BLM or #metoo has accomplished in “canceling” the occasional NFL coach or random ugly guy (frequently Jewish — hmm, almost like there’s a subtext there, too), the basic rules of the game still apply.

It’s completely fucked, and it’s why Rittenhouse may very well be free as fuck when all is said and done, instead of being what he really should be.

A felon.

[UPDATE: And what do you know, the misdemeanor count was dropped, because the language in the law against minors carrying firearms contains language that limits it to a specific type of gun. The judge sat on it to prevent an appeal by the prosecution during the trial. This highlights two things:

• Justice is not blind. The judge in this case has done some questionable things that seem to tilt the scales of justice. Yes, the prosecution has done a poor job, but the move to ban the term “victim” but allow “looter” and to run out the clock on the ambiguity in the firearm statute don’t seem very neutral or even-handed.
• It takes effort to write good laws, and the laws we don’t fix say as much about us as the new laws we pass. If we really believed minors shouldn’t carry firearms, we’d write a law that conveyed that unambiguously. Once someone spots an ambiguity in an existing law, we’d fix it; but that takes effort and focus. If it sits, it sits for a reason. Wisconsin presumably doesn’t think minors possessing firearms is important enough to focus on, so it didn’t.

In theory, a black man or a white woman could do what Rittenhouse did; but we can’t deal in hypotheticals. All we can deal in is the facts: our laws as written may allow a white male who brought a long gun to a social justice protest to go entirely free. If they do, it won’t be fair to call it an accident or a miscarriage of justice. It reflects our priorities, and in that sense, it’s all according to plan. It just so happens: the plan is awful.]