Verdicts on vigilantes
At first glance, the case of Kyle Rittenhouse and the murder of Ahmaud Arbery bear no resemblance. Closer up, though, they have three disturbing things in common: guns, vigilantes empowered by them, and senseless loss of life.
One verdict vindicated a vigilante who put himself in harm’s way and then said he had to shoot in selfdefense. The other could put three vigilantes in prison for life.
What the takeaway for this nation will be remains to be seen.
A jury found Mr. Rittenhouse not guilty of five counts of homicide and reckless endangerment in connection with his killing of two people and wounding of another during a protest in August 2020 against police brutality in Kenosha, Wis. Mr. Rittenhouse, then 17, said he traveled from Antioch, Ill., to Kenosha to help as a medic and, armed with an assault rifle, to defend private property. He claimed self-defense for shooting three people who came at him. Two lesser charges — of illegal possession of a gun by someone unchasing
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der 18 and being out after a curfew had been declared — were dismissed, the former because of contradictions in the law, the latter because the prosecution failed to prove it.
On the law, say legal experts, all those decisions were correct. Yet it is hard to deny the logic of Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger’s argument that “you cannot claim self-defense against a danger you create.” Mr. Rittenhouse injected himself, with a gun, into a volatile situation in which he really had no business to be. The ensuing danger and deadly outcome should surprise no one.
Nor should it be a surprise that three men in Georgia who took it upon themselves in February 2020 to act as their own impromptu neighborhood watch ended up chasing, confronting and killing Mr. Arbery, 25, who was out jogging. They claimed that they believed he had burglarized a house under construction and that he was killed while resisting a citizen’s arrest.
There are vast differences in the two cases, of course, particularly the racial element of three white men and killing an unarmed Black man, and the months it took for charges to be brought — and then only after video of the murder surfaced and sparked a national outcry.
But they raise a similar concern: We live in a culture in which guns are too often seen as a solution — to disputes; to crimes real, perceived, or imagined; to the fear that someone else might have an illegal gun. How many people will take the Rittenhouse verdict as permission to arm and inject themselves into any protest they choose, whether it’s to intimidate others they disagree with, to indulge some dangerously deluded sense of civic engagement, or just to bond with like-minded vigilantes?
If nothing else, states across the country should take a fresh look at their laws on citizen’s arrests and on open carry of weapons. And yes, for the nth time, Congress needs to pass common-sense gun regulations that should include, at a minimum, a new assault weapons ban and universal background checks. And the senseless taking of life in these cases ought to be cause for reflection in a nation awash in guns, yet forever baffled as to why its citizens keep getting shot.