Kyle Rittenhouse - teen who shot three people in Kenosha

Soldato
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Could serve. Also wasn't an AR-15. Is a replica which is typically tooled for a smaller calibre round.
Odd that the US still allows children to serve on active duty I was surprised to see the age limit still at 17 when most of the developed world has moved on th UK for example is now 17 and 9 months at the point of sign on so you won’t finish basic before your 18th.

Regardless the idea that he couldn’t legally vote or have a beer yet he is allowed to walk the streets with such a weapon unsupervised is pretty damning if the American system. Which ever way you cut it two men are dead and this young man’s life will never be the same again all because of a decision he took as a child.
 
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Regardless the idea that he couldn’t legally vote or have a beer yet he is allowed to walk the streets with such a weapon unsupervised is pretty damning if the American system. Which ever way you cut it two men are dead and this young man’s life will never be the same again all because of a decision he took as a child.

Those men are dead and the other’s handshake will be a bit rough now, because of decisions THEY made.
 
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Those men are dead and the other’s handshake will be a bit rough now, because of decisions THEY made.
Yeah for sure there were poor decisions made all around.

For me it was daft to charge him with murder. The only thing to charge him with was I think wrongful possession of his weapon.
Rittenhouse was clearly running away from people intent on doing him harm. Parts of the system are so off and polarised (exacerbated by Trump) that VP Harris and many Democrats
are trying to make this into something it was clearly not.

As Trump found out, with his whole the election was stolen shenanigans, that at least parts of the Judiciary seems to be still operating with a modicum of common sense. It was never murder.
 
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Caporegime
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I’d much rather there were fewer riots (and if riots do occur, they’re dealt with adequately by the proper authorities) than see an increase in vigilanteism… but that’s just me.

Problem is, one of the main catalysts of the riots, dodgy/selective media reporting... drumming up outrage to generate clicks/views hasn't changed at all.

The riot itself was the result of a very dumb protest in response to a police shooting incident that was completely distorted when reported likely because the criminal in question was black and the officer white.

For me it was daft to charge him with murder. The only thing to charge him with was I think wrongful possession of his weapon.

That's even more daft though you need to be able to prove someone broke a law if you want to charge someone else it will just get thrown out - you can't just charge someone with something for the sake of it.
 
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The media, and the 80IQs that follow it, aren't just liars, they're an evil, destablising and destructive force, and need to be brought to heel.
What are you on about?
The usual suspects are embarrassing themselves in the Biden thread https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/the-biden-presidency.18905721/page-53 makes me really worry for the future of self defence in this country.
Self Defence in this country is going nowhere.

It's just you can't buy a weapon and carry it around and then claim you did nothing wrong when you kill someone with it. At the minimum you'd be done for carrying a weapon.
Self Defence in the UK is enshrined in law, however oddly our legal system treats all deaths at the hands of another as suspicious and requiring investigation until they've established the facts, and then if need be they'll take it to a court where a "jury of your peers" can decide if what you did was reasonable (and it usually requires you to have actively hunted down someone who was no longer a threat, held and tortured them, or shot them in the back as they were trying to get away for that to get a conviction).
To me this seems preferable to the one in the US where you can gun someone down in a deserted street then claim to your mate the sheriff that it was self defence and nothing is checked until the video of your yahoo buddies who were in the car is leaked by your idiot lawyer where it shows that you were hunting someone and then gets enough publicity to cause the local elected DA to open an investigation.
 
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That's even more daft though you need to be able to prove someone broke a law if you want to charge someone else it will just get thrown out - you can't just charge someone with something for the sake of it.
You've just described what happens hundreds of times a day in the US to people who can't afford a couple of million for lawyers, or even to spend a few days (let alone in many cases months*) in jail, so plead guilty to "lesser" offences because it gets them out of jail without realising how it means the next time they're arrested on a bogus charge it's going to be even worse.
The US system is frequently very much about charging people with everything they can and hoping that even if the person isn't guilty they'll plead, or charging with everything they can so that the Jury (when it finally gets there) can have the option of deciding what the person was guilty of.
In the UK it would be like charging someone with both death by dangerous driving, death by careless driving and speeding in the event of someone dying in an accident where the vehicle was speeding (IIRc death by careless or inconsiderate driving was bought in because death by dangerous driving is far harder to prove).

Rittenhouse got bail despite killing people, when it's common for people who can't afford to post bail to get stuck in prison for months/years before trail for far lesser offences.
That's not exactly the system treating him harshly.


*Cash bail is an abomination when combined with plea deals and an extremely slow legal process that enjoys locking people up, as it means you often have to choose between spending months/years awaiting trial in jail, or pleading guilty to something you didn't do.
 
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Soldato
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But that won't happen in the USA, so the choice is armed civilians or free rein for rioters.

I’m not ready to write-off the entire country just yet.

Problem is, one of the main catalysts of the riots, dodgy/selective media reporting... drumming up outrage to generate clicks/views hasn't changed at all.

The riot itself was the result of a very dumb protest in response to a police shooting incident that was completely distorted when reported likely because the criminal in question was black and the officer white.

Absolutely, the media (in all forms) has a lot to answer for but it’s not just the media that needs to change. As I said earlier in this thread, this case highlights the issues of American society from top to bottom.

The path out of this mess will be long and difficult, things may even get worse before they get better. But I’m an optimist, I think the US has it in them to recover.
 
Caporegime
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You've just described what happens hundreds of times a day in the US to people who can't afford a couple of million for lawyers, or even to spend a few days (let alone in many cases months*) in jail, so plead guilty to "lesser" offences because it gets them out of jail without realising how it means the next time they're arrested on a bogus charge it's going to be even worse.

You're describing a country with a few hundred million people, of course plenty are arrested each day. Charging people with crimes they didn't commit isn't the norm per se though.

Rittenhouse got bail despite killing people, when it's common for people who can't afford to post bail to get stuck in prison for months/years before trail for far lesser offences.

That isn't necessarily abnormal, certainly not in a self-defence type scenario (there was a guy near me in London who killed a burglar and was simply arrested & interviewed and the case not taken any further even) - Rittenhouse actually had quite a high bail set + spent a couple of months in jail before funds could be raised.

People accused of lesser offenses can often simply use bail bondsmen to get out of jail pretty quickly, raising a couple of million is rather more difficult thus it took 2 months.
 
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It looks like some people traumatised by the verdict are getting their reparations in already:


Joking aside though this is party why this sort of incident occurred... first we had the media stirring things up, then in part (perhaps as a result of fear of the public outrage) we saw rather spineless politicians & prosecutors failing to react.

In Kenosha, they'd had rioting and destruction already but still held the police back, part of the implicit bargain when living in a civil society is that you give a monopoly on violence to the state... if the state then fails to protect you then you get situations like the two Indian businessmen inviting armed men in some sort of attempt to protect/provide a deterrent to people who might be inclined to attack their businesses.

There has been some violence in SF as a result of the verdict and I guess some planned robberies knowing this, that + the San Fran DA is literally what happens when some student radical/leftist actually ends up getting a job with real power:

Check out who raised this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin

Father:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gilbert_(activist)
In October 1981, he participated in the armed robbery of a Brink's armored vehicle, along with members of the Black Liberation Army, members of the May 19 Communist Organization, fellow Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin and others. Although he was an unarmed getaway driver, Gilbert was convicted under New York’s felony murder law in the deaths of two Nyack police officers and a Brink's guard who were killed in the robbery.[3]

Gilbert received a grant of clemency from Governor Andrew Cuomo on August 23, 2021, reducing his minimum term from 75 years to the 40 years he served through October 2021, making him eligible to appear before the parole board and seek a conditional release

Mother
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Boudin
Kathy Boudin (born May 19, 1943) is a former member of the radical left militant organization Weather Underground who was convicted of felony murder for her role in the Brink's robbery of 1981. The robbery resulted in the killing of two Nyack police officers and one security guard, and serious injury to another security guard.[1] Boudin was released from prison on parole in 2003 and became an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Adoptive father:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers
William Charles Ayers (/ɛərz/; born December 26, 1944)[1] is an American elementary education theorist. During the 1960s, Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground militant group, described by the FBI as a terrorist group, that opposed US involvement in the Vietnam War.
[...]
Ayers is a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, formerly holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar.[3] During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, a controversy arose over his contacts with then-candidate Barack Obama.

Adoptive mother

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn
Bernardine Rae Dohrn (née Ohrnstein; born January 12, 1942) is a retired law professor and a former leader of the radical Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for several years. She remained a fugitive, even though she was removed from the list. After coming out of hiding in 1980, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping.

Dohrn had graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967. During the 1980s, she was employed by the Sidley & Austin law firm. From 1991 to 2013, Dohrn was a Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law.


Essentially the current district attorney of San Fran is the biological son of + adopted son of some far-left terrorists (basically part of what would, these days be an Antifa org) with violent criminal convictions and academic positions at various US universities.

Is it any wonder that he's sympathetic to Antifa/BLM and rioters in general and indeed has some rather dubious views on not bothering to charge people over a range of offences.

If they're not careful in the US then they're going to get more people frustrated at what is happening in their communities and potentially more incidents like this.
 
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Got this in a WhatsApp from the son of a NYC friend,
personally I’m unsure about 17 for the military.

17 years old, (at the time),
Couldn’t vote
Couldn’t buy cigarettes,
Couldn’t legally drink,
Couldn’t serve in the military,
Can wander around with an AR-15
strapped over his shoulder.
Welcome to America!

He couldn't even legally walk around with brass knuckles either. However it's deemed fine for him to walk around freely with an AR-15....

It's nuts that , the law was not written better. It basically says "no one under 18 can possess/carry around a dangerous weapon.....except some of the most dangerous weapons you can get" .
 
Soldato
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That's even more daft though you need to be able to prove someone broke a law if you want to charge someone else it will just get thrown out - you can't just charge someone with something for the sake of it.
Really? This response has nothing to do with what I actually wrote. (No surprise there!)

The misdemeanor charge of illegally possessing a dangerous weapon as a minor was much less serious than the felony counts Mr. Rittenhouse faced, and it carried a relatively short sentence. But jurors might have settled on the charge, said Steven Wright, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, if they balked at the more serious counts but wanted to convict Mr. Rittenhouse of something.

So back to my point; the only thing where there might have been a breach of the law was to do with age and possessing that particular firearm. This was the only thing to charge him with, not murder, even though there might have been a technical reason why he was allowed to have that gun at his age.
 
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Soldato
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He couldn't even legally walk around with brass knuckles either. However it's deemed fine for him to walk around freely with an AR-15....

It's nuts that , the law was not written better. It basically says "no one under 18 can possess/carry around a dangerous weapon.....except some of the most dangerous weapons you can get" .
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again I’m incredibly grateful to live in a country where the idiots on either side of an argument can’t go around tooled up with guns.
 
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Those men are dead and the other’s handshake will be a bit rough now, because of decisions THEY made.
Bad decisions were made by all involved Kyle chose to go into a situation with a firearm his choices put him in harms way and he responded with lethal force again his choice. He will live with that the rest of his life and I would be very surprised if he doesn’t spend the rest of his life wishing he stayed at home. Killing in self defence is still killing and most people are never the same again along side this his life will certainly never be the same again. This story will follow him for the rest of his life every time he introduces himself he will be pre judged, some will venerate him others will pillory him but he will never simply be Kyle again.
 
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Soldato
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Definitely will be affected by it, but better this situation than him being wrongfully jailed for it.
I'm sure Grosskreutz will wish he stayed at home also.
The other guys... They don't need to worry about it.
 
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