Kyle Rittenhouse abruptly departed the stage during an appearance at the University of Memphis on Wednesday, after he was confronted about comments made by Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk.
Rittenhouse was invited by the college’s Turning Point USA chapter to speak at the campus. However, the event was met with backlash from a number of students who objected to Rittenhouse’s presence.
The 21-year-old gained notoriety in August 2020 when, at the age of 17, he shot and killed two men—Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as injuring 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz—at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He said the three shootings, carried out with a semi-automatic AR-15-style firearm, were in self-defense. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest where the shootings took place was held after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was left paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot by a white police officer.
I mean, based on history so long as you don’t chase him down and try to take his gun, knock him to the ground and move to bludgeon him, or try a false surrender with intent to shoot him you’re probably fine.
But seriously, if you think he just started shooting at the drop of a hat, watch the trial footage.
He’s a dumbass kid who should never have gone to the protest in the first place (but had every legal right to be where he was) turned right wing grifter because no one else will have him, but all three of his shootings definitely fall under self defense.
I’ll take my downvotes now for not expressing views that contradict trial evidence now, thanks.
Yeah, I feel like most people didn’t watch the full trial. You can have the opinion he shouldn’t have been there, but putting yourself in a dumb situation doesn’t automatically forfeit your right to self defense
I dunno about that. If you needlessly insert yourself into a dangerous situation and you kill people in self defense, there should be consequences.
He went looking for violence. He found it.
I don’t agree, that seems like it would be giving official journalists for example special privileges over citizen journalists. Give free reign to racists to lynch counter protestors, etc.
Do most journalists carry illegal guns in the course of their work?
I don’t think it was illegal, or at least the court didn’t.
Idk, I assume not
Well that’s what our legal system is for, to hash out individual cases. If someone’s going as a citizen journalist that’s very different from going to “keep the peace and shoot looters” and very intentionally bringing along long guns, vs pistols.
He couldn’t legally own a pistol. He was determined to have legally possessed a rifle.
If I’m on my way to sell crack and I get attacked by some psycho do I lose my right of self defense?
If I’m breaking curfew and I get attacked by some psycho do I lose my right of self defense?
At some point you will see that it makes no sense, the legal system already forbids killing looters, so you want them to lose their right of self defense because you don’t like them.
I watched the trial, and I saw the footage. I don’t agree with the verdict one bit, but we live in a society and I just have to accept that outcome.
However, I don’t have to change my opinion about the guy just because he was acquitted in court. He went out looking for trouble, found it, and two people died because of it.
Nah, he is a murderer. Shitty laws in a shithole state does not change that fact.
In what state are there laws that would lead to his conviction for double homicide?
What shitty laws are we talking about? He made a pretty basic and straightforward self defense defense. He didn’t invoke Stand Your Ground, in no small part because WI doesn’t do Stand Your Ground (and all Stand Your Ground generally means is that you don’t have a duty to try to flee from an attacker if possible, and it was only really possible for Rosenbaum and he did try to flee from Rosenbaum).
The only case where he got off on a charge because of “shitty laws” I can think of would be the weapons possession charge and that’s because WI has different ages for different classes of guns, and the kind of gun he had was in the 16+ rather than 18+ category. Ironically, there was at least one person with an illegal gun on the scene, and it was Grosskreutz, and then it was because it was a concealed carry with an expired permit.
I can go into detail if you’d like to know why I agree with the self defense argument made for each of the shootings, but for now I’ll leave you with the point where I knew Rittenhouse would be found not guilty for Grosskreutz, since that one had a single question that changed everything:
Because that question was the difference between self defense or not self defense.
Context matters. He went looking for a fight and found one. One lawyer I heard pointed out that had he lost the fight and died whomever killed him would have been able to argue, probably successfully, the same thing. Self-defense.
Why should the law support murder if the murderer is better at it?
Grosskreutz (the one who survived) could have shot Rittenhouse and justifiably claimed self-defense under the law. He had a gun pointed at him by a dude who had just wasted two other men with it. The law’s fucked.
Last man standing justice system.
You’re not wrong on this. And Rittenhouse mostly got off with a self defense claim on shooting Grosskreutz because Grosskreutz approached in a false surrender, lowered his hands and pointed his gun at Rittenhouse before Rittenhouse shot him. Grosskreutz answered a question to that effect during the trial, and that answer was likely the deciding point on that charge.
Just like the Heard vs Depp case, people have already decided on the truth and they don’t care that the evidence at trial painted a very different story than the one liberal media told you to believe.
Like you said, Kyle was a dumb kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was retreating every single time he shot someone. I hate this case because I’m left in the awkward position of defending a rightoid but that trial was very thorough and those are the facts.
So if I enter your house with a gun and you “threaten” me, I have the right to shot you “in self defense”, right?
You don’t grab a rifle, drive to another state, go to a rally that you gate and then day “they were threatening me”. That’s the equivalent of Russians saying now “Ukrainians are threatening us”.
Just about everything you wrote shows a complete lack of understanding of the evidence presented at trial.
Gun never crossed state lines. If it had, they could have busted him for a firearms possession charge in IL. The gun was kept in WI because of differences in gun laws between WI and IL.
Driving to another state is such a nothing. It’s phrased this way to make it sound like he took some massive journey, but Kenosha and Antioch are just on opposite sides of the state line from each other. The distance is about 20 miles, about half an hour by car. He worked in Kenosha as well.
He didn’t just show up and declare people were threatening him and then start shooting at them. He got into an argument with Rosenbaum when Rittenhouse tried to put out a fire and Rittenhouse tried to flee him. Someone else fired a shot, at which point Rittenhouse stopped and turned and Rosenbaum was within arms length and reached for Rittenhouse’s gun. Rittenhouse fires.
Then Rittenhouse starts heading for the police line. He gets knocked to the ground, and Gruber moved to start beating him with an improvised weapon. Rittenhouse shoots him too.
Then Grosskreutz approaches him in a false surrender,.gets close, lowers his hands and points his gun at Rittenhouse before Rittenhouse shoots him. Grosskreutz’s own testimony said as much.
Kyle works in that state and did not “bring the rifle across state borders” which just cements to me that so many of you did not follow the trial. You’re speaking from a position of ignorance.
This did not happen, the rifle was always there and rittenhouse was there the day before as they worked there, at least read the damn wikipedia article of the kenosha unrest before making up such blatant lies.
edit: And to give you an example, lets say you rob a house and then flee, you can actually defend yourself if the home owner starts chasing you after you left the home.
Here they couldn’t even demonstrate a “crime” or something that rittenhouse did that would have given them a reason to chase him, all we know is that Rosenbaum was going around threatening people before he began to chase rittenhouse and tried to take their weapon, also the moment right before someone shot their pistol into the air which was what made rittenhouse turn around when Rosenbaum was chasing him.
Maybe - and I’m just spitballing here - a parent should have done something different about their stupid underage failure of a son.
Things you should not do if you are the parent of a dumb kid.
He didn’t take it out of his home. The gun was never in his home. This was covered in the trial, because if he had had the gun at home, it would have been illegal due to differences in firearms possession laws between WI and IL. That’s why the gun was kept in WI.
This is such a nothing, but it makes it sound like a big deal. Kenosha is right by the state line, he lived in a town just on the other side of the state line. So, what you are saying is you think parents shouldn’t allow kids in their late teens to go to the next town over unsupervised. The distance is ~20 miles, about half an hour in a car.
Regular kids? That’s fine.
Dumb kids like this joker? Hell no.
Why was he at that place at that time? He didn’t just stumble into the area unaware.
What liberal media is this?