Rittenhouse: Good News, Bad News

I’ve had to spend a long weekend explaining to a lot of “progressives”: it’s entirely possible that not only are both of the following true:

  • Something can be a bad idea, legally and in common sense terms,
  • Self-defense is not only legitimate, but a very high hurdle to meet under the law in every state I’m aware of; that it’s a “license to kill” if you consider being arrested, spending two months in jail, having to bond for $2.5 Million to get released, spending 15 months in legal limbo, God only knows how much in legal bills, standing trial with a risk of two life sentences and a couple more decades to boot, and having to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder in case some depraved, entitled lefty narcissist decides to “even the score” to be a “license to kill”.

Most disturbing? Beyond the number of people who think that:

  • we should just ignore the law and make Rittenhoue an example because “we don’t want people wandering around defending themselves, or that
  • “crossing state lines” is a crime, or that
  • Kyle Rittenhouse was a “vigilante” for going to a riot with a gun, but Gage Grosskreutz wasn’t, or that
  • Rioting is sacrosanct protected speech?

…what could be worse?

This: I think both sides missed the most important lesson.

Which is, I believe, this.

Some Background: It is human nature to create order.

thout order, prosperity is impossible – and by “prosperity“, I don’t mean “his and hers Bentleys“, I mean living as something other than a subsistence farmer.

Without prosperity, freedom is academic. (And without freedom, order is tyranny, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves).

I’m no expert, but I think this is the real lesson of Kenosha that a lot of people on the right, and a lot more on the left, need to get.

We pay taxes to government – lots and lots of them. And providing “order” is the one unambiguously legitimate role of government.

And if government isn’t going to provide order, fairly and equally across society, in exchange for the burden of supporting it, and keep our businesses from getting burned, our cars from getting stolen, our kids from getting mugged on the way home from school?

People will start creating order for themselves. And one of these next times, it won’t be a 17 year old kid with more idealism than common sense and a loaner rifle.

It’ll be people who won’t run to the police to surrender when nasty nastiness happens.

It’ll be people who do their self-defense pre-emptively. People who don’t care about the high rhetoric and due process of the legal system.

People for whom shooting people isn’t something from video games; it’s something they do or did for their livelihood, either in the neighborhood or in Fallujah or Mogadishu or Helmand or somewhere in the Pine Barrens.

It’ll be people who keep secrets – you could even say, people who observe, and enforce, “codes of silence”.

Sounds like…the Mob? A Cartel? Omar’s crew from The Wire?

Weird.

Word Salad With A Side Of Crocodile Tears

Madame Vice President [1] on the Rittenhouse verdict:

So – the woman for whom giggling about putting black men in jail for simple weed possession was pillow talk with Willie Brown, and who came out in favor of prosecutors hiding exculpatory evidence in death penalty cases, has been…

…sorry. Couldn’t finish that with a straight face.

[1] Keep checking back on this.

Drunk Teenagers With Keys To Dad’s Bulldozer

We’ll allow for a moment that ‘Medium.com”, when the subject is race, criminal/social “justice” or the economy, is like Tumblr for people with unsupportably high self-esteem .

With that being said, this happened this morning:

Now, for whatever reason it’s not loading for me at the moment, or I’d be llinking to it. I’ll try to catch it later today.

But if we’re judging by the headline?

As I noted last week, people are projecting their views of the rest of American on this trial -and while I pointed out that all “sides” were doing it, let’s be honest; it’s the left that’s making it into a cottage industry.

Two observations:

Pick Your Poison: If you thought Januarhy 6 was an epic assault on America, but don’t see the attempt to bully and intimidate jurors – the backbone of our justice system, as imperfect is it and they are – as something every bit as serious, you are an idiot.

Allow me to say it to your face.

Literally, if need be.

Rules for Radicals: And of course, chaos benefits the extremes – of both sides. Especially the extreme that has a plan and the political and social “infrastructure” to capitalize on and exploit the chaos .

In 1933, the German Communists supported President Von Hindsenburg giving Chancellor HItler – the leader of the Reichstag’s (Parliament’s) largest party, the Nazis – near compete control under an emergency powers decree. The Communists – with their direct action arm, Rote Fahne, which later became “Anti”-Fa – figured they had the political will and street power to capitalize on the chaos they saw ensuing .

They bet wrong.

Big Left, today, isn’t betting wrong. While “Red” America is proud of its traditions, and owns a hell of a lot of guns,there is no organization on the right that is waiting in any significant numbers, with a plan and people with their own willl to power, least of all a will to power that leads back to a Constitutional Republic.

The riot on January 6, stupid and illegal as it was, was never in any real position to alter the Constitutionally-mandated process.

Bullying the justice system? That most certainly is.

Trial And Error

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking through the Cub Foods on Larpenteur, gauging the level of shortage going on, when Avery LIBRELLE almost literally bumps into him.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Aw, ssshhhhhure enough, it’s Avery. How are you…

LIBRELLE: People going places where people don’t know who they are, and might be angered by their presence, should stay home. It’s just provocation!”

BERG: Are you talking about the Rittenhouse Trial, or the Ahmad Arberry trial?

LIBRELLE: Clearly, the…

(Stops)

LIBRELLE: Um…the…er…

BERG: (Slowly steps away as the wheels grind slowly to a halt.

And SCENE

I Shouted Out Who Killed Joseph Rosenbaum, When After All, It Was You And Me

The Kyle Rittenhouse case – involved in jury instrucitons today, and going to final attorney summations today – is plenty complicated, but about some fairly simple questions:

  • Did Rittenhouse instigate or participate in instigating two different deadly-force incidents in which he used lethal force on four people, with two dead, one seriously injured, and one missed (who has disappeared from public view)?
  • Was his fear of death or great bodily harm reasonable?
  • Was the threat to his life immediate?
  • Was his response reasonable – enough to end the attack on him?
  • DId he make a reasonable effort under the circumstances to disengage?

Proving or disproving those five points for two incidents and four shootings has taken eight days of testimony and over a year of pre-trial wrangling – all very complicated – but the questions themselves are fairly simple.

But as far as the media and the large culture are concerned, this trial isn’t really about the facts of the case.

This case is about America’s tribes – the “four Americas” that George Packer talked about last summer – projecting their views of each other onto each other via a teenager who jumped into the deep end of the pool head-first.

Smart” America, the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton crowd, see in Rittenhouse the bitter gun-clinging Jeezuz freak they picture that other tribe of Americans being; they earnestly exclaim “Nobody needs a gun like that” (ignoring the fact that four people tried to kill him). They think Rittenhoue is an intellectual symbol of all they detest about that other America. This includes most, but not all, media coverage; Big Media has cast its lot with “Just America”, and it shows in much of the coverage.

Real” America seems. him as a lone sentinel of freedom, fighting back against the (politically favored, socially immunized) mob that is ravaging our centers of thought and commerce (and Kenosha). A kid from bedrock America, good and true, a bone to be chewed by a “blue” culture and media (ptr) who are siding with the rioters

“Free” America sees this as another show trial, like Bernard Goetz, a symbol of a state run amok that is actively crushing liberty.

“Just” America, naturally, sees Rittenhouse, the person and the case, as a symptom of “white supremacy” and the base, violent nature of the army of straw cis-men they face.

Indeed, with few exceptions, the higher the social status of the person commenting on Rittenhouse, the less their commentary actually has to do with the shootings in Kenosha or the facts at trial.

Everyone and everything in our society today is a metaphor, it seems.

In The Bag

This blog was founded primarily to lend my small, relatively insignificant voice to pointing out the growing bias and ethical turpitude the mainstream media.

That was in 2002 – a much more innocent time, relatively speaking.

As we’ve documented the proceedings in the Rittenhouse trial, I’ve noted the scabrous, depraved slant in the coverage.

Someone actually put ’em in the same place:

Local media is no better; most ran headlines similar to the above during Monday’s proceedings – only Channel 11 made a quick headline reference to the fact that Grosskreutz incriminated himself and upheld Rittenhouses self-defense claim against him (without saying it in as many words, naturallly).

Public media? NPR and MPR this morning ran a report from Wisconsin Public Radio about yesterday’s proceedings that focused on a dispute over whether the owner of the used car lot where the incident started did or did not pay, or even ask, civilians to provide security – which will have no impact on the verdict, other than perhaps gulling any potentially dim jurors…

…and ignored the county Medical Examiner and photographer Nathan DeBruin, who largely upheld Rittenhouse’s self-defense claim.

I tend to give people the benefit of a doubt. Reporters aren’t largely lawyers. Many of them aren’t curious enough to go much past the press releases that seem to make up so much of one’s morning newscast.

But this goes way past ignorance, and given the amount of reliable information that is available, incompetence as well.

They are pushing a narrative; protesters good, protests mostly peaceful, resistance entirely depraved and motivated by white supremacy.

To the narrative, the battle is a reductionist cartoon with white hats on one side and MAGA caps on the other, counting on news consumers to be too dim to know the difference.

As the 2020 elections, the California recount, and the recent election in Austin Texas show, its not wrong.

So Then This Happened

During testimony yesterday in the Kyle Rittenhoue trial, Gaige Grosskreuz – the “medic” with the illegally-concealed who was shot while chasing Rittenhouse with an illegally-concealed Glock – this happened:

In this, Grosskreutz admits – after a half-hour of cross-examination by defense attorney Chirifisi – that his actions justified Rittenhouse’s claim of self-defense against him, and likely Huber as well. The admission above takes place at 3:23 of the video below; the preceding several minutes of the defense cross-examination is fascinating….

…as Chirifisi slowly backs Grosskreutz into telling the truth, is fascinating to watch.

As was the prosecutor’s classic facepalm.

Defense attorney Andrew Branca blogged about the day’s events. He’s scathing to ADA Binger.

As I stepped through the cross-examination of Grosskreutz today, I identified no fewer than 19 substantive portions, nearly 50% of the total time spent on cross by Attorney Chirafisi, that were substantively destructive to the State’s narrative of guilt, and helpful to the defense narrative of self-defense.   It was harder to identify the parts to leave out of today’s end-of-day post than it was to select the parts to keep in.

“Directed verdict” – a judge telling a jury that the facts leave only one possible choice – is what the lawyers in the windows on the left of the screen start yelling. I suspect that’s unlikely, although less so than the belief in some quarters that the judge should toss the whole trial, which just isn’t going to happen; someone would gin that into grounds for an appeal, and then you’re one judge away from having to go through the whole thing again.

In the course of this trial, I’ve learned one important thing; the big lesson I took away from carry permit class 16 years ago has changed. The defense no longer has to prove the major elements of their case; they have the burden of providing evidence of self-defense; the prosecution then has to prove that any one of the following five standards for self-defense wasn’t met:

1. Innocence – the defendant didn’t start the altercation

2. Proportionality – they used only the force necessary to stop the threat

3. Imminence – the lethal force was used in response to something going on at that moment; not the day before, not some future threat.

4. Reasonableness – the defendant reasonably believed they were going to die.

5. Avoidance – the defendant tried to avoid the episode. Note – even in a Stand your Ground or Castle situation, judges will often advise juries it’s best to try to avoid the use of lethal force.

It seems obvious that the prosecution’s case in the Huber and Grosskreutz shootings fell apart yesterday. The Rosenbaum shooting may be a little closer fought, but I think there’s at least reasonable doubt so far…

…and the defense still hasn’t presented its case.

Just to be clear – killing is a tragedy, and it’s best not to be where one expects violence to happen. The law – and, in places like Minneapolis and Kenosha, politics – aren’t fond of citizens defending their property. Be aware of this.

But hopefully this past two years, and a good mid-term at the state and federal level, start changing that.

Higher Calling

Florida governor DeSantis proposes broadening Florida’s self-defense laws to make shooting in defense of property against looters more legally tenable.

The media is howling that it would enable roaming packs of vigilantes to slaughter people on the streets. Like most media reports on expanding self-defense rights, it’s a lot more nuanced than that:

The law would expand the state’s self-defense law, which currently forbids “the use of force in defense of property,” by increasing what constitutes a “forcible felony,” according to the Miami Herald. DeSantis seeks to make looting or “interruption or impairment” of a business such a felony, thereby justifying deadly force to prevent it…The Republican’s bill would also make it a third-degree felony to obstruct traffic, and would allow drivers to have legal immunity if they unintentionally kill or maim anyone engaging in blocking a roadway during a demonstration, according to the Herald. The law, which is only a draft at the time of publishing, is also set to grant state authorities the ability to withhold funds from localities that choose to reduce their police budgets

Expect much pants-wetting from the class that still thinks looters are “mostly peaceful”.

But they’re missing the point. The target of this bill isn’t looters.

It’s Kamala Harris.

DeSantis is setting himself up as the “Law and Order and Competence” candidate for the presidency in 2024.

And after this past year, I gotta say he’s on my short list.

Appeasement

Kyle Rittenhouse. Murder.  Another tough case for the prosecution. 

Sure, the prosecution has a tape of a kid shooting people.  But the defense gets a turn, too.  Here’s their opening salvo.

And that’s not to mention that all three of the people he shot were convicted felons – not exactly the kind of people Kenoshans want roaming their streets.

Three criminals trying to destroy our town.  A good kid standing up for what’s right.  A racist prosecution to appease the mob.  Liberals may not think those themes will resonate with the jury.  I suspect they will.

Joe Doakes

If he gets acquitted – and I’m far from sanguine, but I think there’s hope – heads will melt.

And that melting will express itself in yet more riots.

Statement Against Interest

“Prog” columnist looks at the statute and the evidence, concludes Kyle Rittenhouse will likely be acquitted.

I don’t disagree – and find that there’s ample grounds for caution for all the rest of us that take the Second Amendment seriously.

I homed in on these two passages:

When [the first “victim”, Joseph] Rosenbaum, who was unarmed, finally cornered Rittenhouse, he grabbed for the teenager’s gun. Multiple shots rang out, and Rosenbaum fell, mortally wounded.

Did Rittenhouse have a reasonable belief under the circumstances that if Rosenbaum got his gun he would suffer death or great bodily harm? Jurors in Wisconsin are instructed that “reasonable” means “what a person of ordinary intelligence and prudence would have believed … under the circumstances that existed at the time.”

And this bit here:

A third victim, Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, of West Allis, Wisconsin, who survived, first held up his hands in a gesture of surrender at a distance of a few feet. In one of his hands, he held a gun. But when he “moved toward” Rittenhouse, prosecutors said, Rittenhouse fired, striking him in the arm.

That final shooting “will be the most serious problem” for Rittenhouse at trial, Kling said. ”The guy did have a gun in his hand. But he wasn’t pointing it at or threatening Rittenhouse.”

My first carry permit instructor, the last Joel Rosenberg, used to put it this way: “You’ll be making a life-or-death decision in a split second, likely under incredible stress, in the dark, with incomplete information. The prosector will have weeks and months in a warm, well-lit building, protected by metal detectors and deputies, to decide whether you were right”.

Another of Joel’s sayings: “Shooting in self-defense is a choice between losing your life, and ruining it”.

Because while there’s a lot of rhetoric about deterring the madness, to say nothing of resisting it, it’s still incredibly risky, and under normal circumstances – and even some garden-variety extraordinary ones – best avoided:

Overwhelmingly I hear from the professionals that their plan for dealing with riots and mayhem is “Don’t be there.” Check the ego. Back away from the social media siren call to “be part of the solution.” Inserting yourself into a riot (AKA “war zone”) where we now know there are armed violent criminals (often felons) who are there with the expressed intent to do extreme violence to someone is, in my view, just foolish.

It’s said that good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. I sure have found that to be true a lot of times. In flying, we say you have a skill bucket and a luck bucket. You hope to fill your skill bucket before using up everything in the luck bucket.

For your consideration.

For Posterity’s Sake

Stipulated in advance – we don’t know yet how the Rittenhouse case in Racine is going to end up.

Acknowledging up front that Berg’s 18th Law is in effect, it would appear that Rittenhouse’s first shooting might just be problematic, and that the second two appeared to be textbook legitimate self-defense.

Of course, earlier we noted the provenance of the two “victims”. The first person shot was a rather unsavory person whose behavior hash’t really been the subject of any public scrutiny:

The second person killed (and the ones wounded with him), either:

So – while it’s entirely possible the kid committed murder, it’d seem the idea that he’s a “white supremacist” might be just a tad bit of a stretch – and while all lives are precious to God, the path from the pedo and the thumper to “black” seems a little insurmountable.

With all of that exhaustively noted, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say this tweet from Ayanna Pressley needs to not fall down the memory hole:

Heh.

UPDATE: Lin Wood and Rittenhouse’s defense team is on the ground swinging.

More later.

Rittenhouse

I get it.

If you’re a businessperson, a law-abiding citizen, a resident of a place like Minneapolis or Saint Paul or Kenosha, you might be getting a little tired of being siultaneousy treated like a villain, a sucker and a pop-sociology punching bag.

And seeing the entitled, upper-middle-cass, over-schooled, undereducated “progressive” thugs and the depredations they wreak, you might just be as mad as hell and not in a mood to take it anymore.

You might even take the Second Amendment of the Constitution seirously, with its implied empowerment to defend your life, your family, your property, your community and your freedom.

And truth be told, I feel it too. The Thursday night after Memorial Day, when the destruction came to Saint Paul, the temptation to strap up and sit out on the porch with a book and a couple of poieces of ugly black insurance would have been pretty dang tempting if all of my guns hadn’t fallen into Mille Lacs, and they didn’t terrify me besides.

It’s even ore overwhelming when you have a government that seems, at least in Minnneapolis, Saint Paul and Minnesota at large, to be on the wrong side.

It’s times like this the urge to get some friends and gun up and find some bit of real estate to protect from the mob – your own, someone else’s, it matters little – is palpable.

It’s a lousy idea for two reasons.

For starters – in most states, the odds are good that you’ll come off worse, legally, than the scumbags.

And the scumbags want a civil war.

Let’s look at both problems.

Self-Defense – As we’ve noted in this space before, the rules for claiming self-defense are (intentionally?) a little opaque in many states, including MInnesota and Wisconsin.

To sum up the confluence of a little statute and a lot of case law:

  1. You must reasonably, immediately fear death or great bodily harm.  Reasonable means “it’ll convince a jury”.  Immediate means now; if someone says “I’m gonna kill you…tomorrow”, you can’t kill them first.
  2. You must use appropriate force.  In other words, you can only use the force needed to end the threat.  No more.
  3. You must make a reasonable effort to retreat.  Reasonable.  If you’re pushing your baby in a stroller, you don’t need to leave it behind.  If you’re a 70 year old man with a knee replacement attacked by four youths, you don’t need to try to out run them.  And in Minnesota, it doesn’t apply in your house.  In “Stand Your Ground” states, this provision is disregarded.  Minnesota is not a Stand Your Ground state.
  4. You must not be a willing participant: you can’t start a brawl, and then shoot someone who breaks a bottle.Put another way, you must not be the aggressor.

Berg’s 18th Law is in full effect, here – but given what we might know about the crime, it would seem that Rittenhouse may have the same problem as Alan Scarsella, the man who shot at some “protesters” who were chasing him and his friends away from the Fourth Precinct in North MInneapolis a few years ago. Scarsella likely met three of the criteria for self defense – but the prosecution painted him, successfully, as the aggressor . He didn’t have to go to North Minneapolis, and he certainly didn’t have to post a stupid video bragging about it.

We’ll see what happens.

Say You Want A Revolution – In 1933 as German president Paul Hindenburg mulled giving emergency power to a cabinet led by Adolph Hiter, among the biggest supporters of the power giveaway were…

…the German Communist Party. The Nazi’s “enemies”. They figured extremism woulds benefit them – when the middle becomes untenable, the extremes become self-preservation. It’d worked for the Communists in Russia, and showed promise in other European countries; the Hard Left’s discipline and organization enabled it to win a batte of the extremes over right wings that weren’t anywhere near organized enough to prevail against Big Left’s discipline and regimentation.

They banked wrong on the batatle against Hiter – but got the formula down in North Korea, China, and a fair chunk of the Third World in the fifties through the seventies, and evena few since.

They are banking on the same thing today. Not without good reason.