No matter what a jury decides about the legal fate of Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people during last year’s riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, nobody should treat Rittenhouse like a victim or an avatar of justice.
Rittenhouse is at clear moral fault for the two deaths. He went into Kenosha that night expecting trouble, and he grievously exacerbated the trouble he found.
Rittenhouse was a vigilante. Vigilantism is benighted. He had no business being in Kenosha that evening; indeed, by law, he should have stayed away. He broke numerous laws leading up to the killings, all of which add up to greater moral (if not legal) culpability for the deaths.
Rittenhouse drove without a license, carried a weapon illegally, and volunteered to protect a business he needed GPS to find on a map and whose owners he didn’t even know and who hadn’t asked for his help. The weapon was not a handgun that someone supposedly providing “first aid” in a riot zone might carry for protection; it was an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, hardly a reasonable choice for someone allegedly acting as a self-appointed medic.
And he was not entitled to be there. Town leaders had instituted a curfew for public safety, to deescalate the riot. If you violate a public-safety curfew while carrying an illegal (and highly deadly) weapon in the midst of a tremendously volatile situation, you are like someone running toward a fire while carrying dynamite, a fuse, and a match.
The first man Rittenhouse killed was a homeless fellow who ran at him, yelling curses and threats while throwing at him an empty plastic bag. After killing him, Rittenhouse ran down the street with several people in furious pursuit. Rittenhouse tripped and fell, and then what happened after that is a matter of dispute and differing interpretations. One more man died, and another was shot in the arm — after which, Rittenhouse quickly and admirably tried to turn himself in to police.
A host of conservatives are rushing to Rittenhouse’s side, arguing he was acting in self-defense. Fear, perhaps, but not really self-defense. He created the dangerous situation with all his earlier actions. He was the one who killed two unarmed men who, even if not moral exemplars themselves, would still be alive had Rittenhouse not gone where he didn’t belong while packing illegal heat.
Others might say that the trial prosecutors seem inept, and some might note that the judge seems to favor Rittenhouse. The jury will assess the facts and come to whatever verdict seems legally right. But morally, in a society in which the rule of law prevails through the consent of the governed, the vigilante is wrong. The man who knowingly provides the gun for the game of Russian roulette is depraved. Rittenhouse may not serve time for murder, but he deserves not an ounce of sympathy. My sympathies are with those who died and their loved ones.
