The state has a monopoly on violence within its territory. If you try to do its job for it, it will crack down on your harder than any common criminal.
I've done cursory research on Kyle Rittenhouse, watched the interview before the event. He certainly doesn't strike me as a "terrorist" or however he's being depicted on the more shrill segments of social media. He might very well be acquitted on the basis of self-defense.
He's likely "guilty" of the non-crime of being an aggressive, but naive teenage boy—someone who wanted to throw himself into harm's way but thought it'd all be like a video game.
None of this changes the fact that you can and should not challenge the state's monopoly on force—you can never become the police. The State unquestionably has the capability of maintaining law-and-order—and has done so in recent memory.
The situation we face now is a combination of Trump's incompetence and impotence—as well as a larger political game. But we are not in a situation of anarchy and the absence of authority. The state could maintain order if it wanted to but won't (again, for complicated reasons).
Throwing yourself into a chaotic situation involving state-level actors is just asking for serious trouble. I don't expect a 17-year-old to grasp this... but I feel like the Right always refuses to learn lessons from these events and is just searching for a new folk hero.
