The Rittenhouse Case

 I have not followed the Rittenhouse case until it became impossible not to follow it at least a little if I watched the news. I know only what I have seen in the news, and a lot of it is strange. He is not a child and was not one when he did the shooting, but he was a minor living with his mother. One has to wonder if she or his father went along with him going on his own to a violent riot in another state, or if either tried to stop him. One really has to wonder how someone thought giving a firearm to someone his age to carry unsupervised in a riot was a good idea. I know there are seventeen and eighteen year-olds in the armed forces, but  they  have gone through at least basic training and are under the direction of responsible older officers and noncoms.

If the news it accurate, it seems he was acting in self-defense in the shootings, and that it would be very difficult to show he was not beyond any reasonable doubt.  The betting is that he will be acquitted, and that seems likely to me. (Officials in the region seem to think so too. They are preparing for rioting by leftists.)

Some conservatives in the media are touting Rittenhouse as a “Second Amendment hero”.  That makes little sense to me. The case has nothing to do with the right to keep and bear arms. It is about whether in one incident a firearm was used legally or criminally.  Nor do I find his actions as reported heroic. They are at best only justified. A calmer and more experienced man might have handled the situations without killing anyone.  The riot in Kenosha was a mess, but he was not someone who should have tried to do something about it, irrespective of how his intervention turned out. He was neither immediately affected nor mature enough.  He had no business being where he was.