There's legally defensible, and there's morally defensible. I'm comfortable saying that his actions are one but not the other.
I can see why you might think that having semi-random people drive in from surrounding areas with firearms is the proper response to the threat of a protest turning violent. I don't see it that way.
Standing on your property and waving a gun around will probably prevent your property from being damaged in a protest that turns into a riot. Probably. Go ahead and do that if you think it's the right thing to do. But bear in mind that the police should not be doing that for you. What vigilantes do is not what the police would, or should do, and in fact it usually works at cross-purposes. As such, vigilantes justifying what they do by claiming that the police are not doing it (as you are) is deeply ironic.
I've been in the thick of multiple protests in and around Oakland that were varying degrees of violent and varying degrees of contained, and by far the most successful response I've seen has been from trained riot response teams using non-lethal crowd control equipment and tactics that are definitely not part of the standard police playbook. Over the decades it's become abundantly clear that killing protestors - even violent agitators using the protests as cover - backfires dramatically and results in far more violence and property damage than it prevents. As was the case with Rittenhouse. He wasn't an idiot for showing up in Kenosha. But he was absolutely an idiot for bringing a rifle there, and then inserting himself deliberately into a situation where he would feel the need to use it to defend himself. That makes him more than an idiot in my book -- that makes him a piece of shit. Two people are dead because he wanted to play hero defending some fucking parked cars. The cops weren't standing around with rifles, you say? Gee, I wonder why they weren't doing that. I guess they just don't value parked cars the way they should.
Vigilantes use "lack of policing" as an excuse for stupidity. Same way violent criminals use protests as cover. Two stupidities do not cancel. That's not how stupidity works.
no subject
I can see why you might think that having semi-random people drive in from surrounding areas with firearms is the proper response to the threat of a protest turning violent. I don't see it that way.
Standing on your property and waving a gun around will probably prevent your property from being damaged in a protest that turns into a riot. Probably. Go ahead and do that if you think it's the right thing to do. But bear in mind that the police should not be doing that for you. What vigilantes do is not what the police would, or should do, and in fact it usually works at cross-purposes. As such, vigilantes justifying what they do by claiming that the police are not doing it (as you are) is deeply ironic.
I've been in the thick of multiple protests in and around Oakland that were varying degrees of violent and varying degrees of contained, and by far the most successful response I've seen has been from trained riot response teams using non-lethal crowd control equipment and tactics that are definitely not part of the standard police playbook. Over the decades it's become abundantly clear that killing protestors - even violent agitators using the protests as cover - backfires dramatically and results in far more violence and property damage than it prevents. As was the case with Rittenhouse. He wasn't an idiot for showing up in Kenosha. But he was absolutely an idiot for bringing a rifle there, and then inserting himself deliberately into a situation where he would feel the need to use it to defend himself. That makes him more than an idiot in my book -- that makes him a piece of shit. Two people are dead because he wanted to play hero defending some fucking parked cars. The cops weren't standing around with rifles, you say? Gee, I wonder why they weren't doing that. I guess they just don't value parked cars the way they should.
Vigilantes use "lack of policing" as an excuse for stupidity. Same way violent criminals use protests as cover. Two stupidities do not cancel. That's not how stupidity works.