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Don Gates's avatar

In response to Vance's addition to the idiocratization of our discourse, my recollection is that young Rittenhouse drove a good ways away from his community, assault rifles in tow, to impose his presence on another community that was not his own. So spare me the indignation about what officials did to Rittenhouse's community.

I'm not following this story at all really. Whether Rittenhouse is convicted or acquitted means very little to me. What I find insulting, though, is Rittenhouse getting up on the stand sobbing about killing two people and maiming another, when he showed up at a protest far from his house armed like a mujahideen. If you were going to cry about shooting and killing folks, why did you pop up at a protest equipped to shoot and kill folks?

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R Mercer's avatar

Rittenhouse is guilty of criminal stupidity. A person who could not buy the gun he used (so someone bought it for him) and that had to commute a long distance to the scene of his overt, criminal stupidity. IIRC his mom drove him there.

The real criminals here are the person who bought a teenager an Ar-15, provided his transportation and, most importantly allowed him to think that doing what he was doing was smart or heroic or necessary.

There are good reasons why law enforcement is left to state agencies and why the state has a decided interest in controlling what is essentially vigilante violence. Doing otherwise is NOT conducive to civilization. Creating a running (often false) narrative that excuses such action as necessary (especially when aimed at political opponents or the Other) is destructive to law and order (something that the people pushing the narrative CLAIM to be all for).

At it's bare essential, State = monopoly of legitimate force, with few and rare exceptions. In situations where this is not true, you end up with anarchy and warlord-ism. See Afghanistan. See Somalia, see any number of third-world failed states.

These idiot militias are under the impression that they would be the top dogs in a situation of anarchy and there is this persistent right wing violence pornography around the whole idea. Just look at the Claremont Institute "study" that came to light a few days ago as a prime example.

I have owned guns for most of my life. I served in the US military. Sport shooter, hunter.

I have never felt the need to be armed during my normal, daily life. I have never felt the need to own the types of weapons that many of this wingnuts believe are necessary for their "self-defense." Most of these people do not live in locations where endemic violence is a problem... they don't live in a gang-ridden neighborhood in the inner city or even get near one.

Remember that the primary focus of militias in their heyday was in the south as a defensive measure against slave rebellion. I think that says a lot.

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