[Maritime Q-Scout]

I admittedly haven't followed this case that closely. Mostly skimming this thread.

Here's what I've gathered, but obviously could be mistaken on some facts.

17 year old crossed state lines because he said he wanted to protect his friend's dad's business.

By crossing state lines, he basically lived in a suburb of the city which happened to be in another state. Would be kind of like living on the Saskatchewan side of Lloydminster, and going to a protest in the Alberta side. Techincally crossing provincial lines, but it'd be so common you wouldn't really think about it.

I'm curious where the adults in this kid's life were. My mom would hang me by the ears if I thought it'd be a good idea to go into a potential riot zone to "protect my buddy's dad's business". I'm twice as old at Rittenhouse. As a business owner do you really think "yeah, yeah I'm gonna have my kid's friend comes with an assault rifle to protect my business... that makes more sense than having insurance!" None of this paragraph absolves anyone, nor do I mean it to blame anyone, it's just a WTF!? If these are the adult influences in this kid's life, I do feel bad for him.

I'm unclear on how everything started. Who was the 'aggressor'? And from my cursory reading of this thread, it could have been both. Someone has an assault riftle and and you feel threatened, to you they're the aggressor. And you know what, they kind of are. The civil standard of assult is the jonestly belief of a threat of harm.

The converse is true. Rittenhouse may have had the same belief. Random people are coming at me.

All parties are acting in self-defense.

To me, and I'm open to having my mind changed on this: The fact a 17 year old could be carrying an assault rifle in these circumsntaces is insanity. A clear contributing factor, but perfectly legal.

I waiver on my opinion on Rittenhouse even being there. I'd like to know more about the relationship with the business, was the business owner there, was he the only one protecting the business?

Part of me thinks of it this way:

If someone walked into the parking lot of a Hells Angels clubhouse in Wisconsin, with an assault rifle and wearing Outlaws colours, does that person get to claim self-defense when they feel like the Hells Angels are going to harm them?

Following the Rittenhouse verdict the answer would likely be yes; but... should it be? At what point are you considered an aggressor, even if what you're doing is 'legal'?

If you put yourself in the position to require self-defence, should it be available? And if so, to what extent? Should the standard be? Should someone be able to shoot someone if their attacker is unarmed? What if their attacker is larger than them? Smaller? Multiple attackers? If it's one attacker and you have multiple defenders?

My uneducated hypothesis at this point is that Rittenhouse is techincally not-guilty, but due to some pretty insane laws that really doesn't seem to jive with what some of us think they should be.

But again, I'm not only open to having my mind changed, I'd argue it's not even made up.