Thread by @folkbum

The #Rittenhouse case goes to the jury today. It probably won't come back today; regardless, I just want to put some of my thoughts out there for the world today anyhow. A small thread.

2/ I did not watch every second of every day of the trial. But I tried to follow along with good reporters and smart commentators. Most of what I see is skepticism that Rittenhouse will spend even one more day in jail.

3/ We can argue--and people have!--about whether that is the fault of the ADA pushing back against pre-trial rulings, a possibly-racist judge who doesn't know how any technology newer than a slide rule works, the general zeitgeist, whatever.

4/ It all points to one scary conclusion: The United States has essentially made it legal for bad actors with guns to create unsafe situations and then kill in "self defense."

5/ When George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin, it should have sent warning flares up all over the country to eliminate "stand your ground" laws and clarify statutes around self defense. It did not.

6/ Let us imagine, for a moment, a counter-factual. A 17-year-old white kid, much like Rittenhouse, walks into a mall with an AR-15. "Why do you have a gun, kid?" "Malls can be dangerous and I want to be safe."

7/ But he's a kid with an assault rifle! A variety of unarmed adults try to get the gun away from him; feeling unsafe as people are grabbing for his weapon, he shoots. And kills.

8/ "It was self defense," he says at trial. "All these people were attacking me." No shit, Sherlock--you brought a gun to a mall.

So why is it different bringing a gun to the streets of Kenosha?

9/ The men who killed Ahmad Arbery are using a similar defense right now. They chased him down, he fought back, and the killed him in self defense.

10/ Those who create chaos and then kill because they felt unsafe in the chaos should not be allowed to claim self defense. Period. The situation would not have happened had they not created the chaos; they must bear responsibility for the deaths in that chaos.

11/ There simply must be "you can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theater" exemption to the self-defense rule.

12/ So much of this hinges on our gun culture. As much as the gunfucker types love to say the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is if there's a good guy with a gun, this has clearly proven false in the Rittenhouse case.

13/ Whether the first death--Rittenhouse put four bullets in a man in less than a second, a power *no* 17-year-old should ever have--was justified is not the point. The point is once this kid was spraying bullets, adults tried to stop him.

14/ One of those adults had a gun. (Ironically, he is the one who survived being shot.) Not one single pro-NRA or gunfucker voice has spoken up for Gaige Grosskreutz, who was the good guy with a gun in Kenosha that night.

15/ Grosskreutz was everything Rittenhouse thought he was. Grosskreutz was a trained medic; he was taking responsibility to stop the violence in the streets. He got shot for it, and he's been pilloried by the right and Rittenhouse supporters.

16/ Where is Grosskreutz's right to defend himself? Or, for that matter, Anthony Huber, who also died trying to disarm a panicky 17-year-old with an assault rifle?

17/ It also means something that Rittenhouse's defenders include white supremacists. No, you can't necessarily judge him for those who support him, but when the racists are on your side, you really need to step back and figure out whether that's the side you want to be on.

18/ So this is where I fear we're headed: Explicit permission for people--well, White Men, let's be honest--to be shitty people, do terrible things, start chaos. And then to kill in "self defense" when people around them try to stop the chaos.

19/19 We cannot go there. We cannot let our country be that country.

#Rittenhouse and what he did in #Kenosha is not the problem, but symptom of the problem. We have too many guns, too many white dudes wanting to play hero, and justice system that will let them get away with it.