Eric Levitz writes:

In August 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse brought an AR-15 to downtown Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the name of law and order. As protests and riots raged in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the 17-year-old Blue Lives Matter enthusiast felt called to serve as an amateur armed guard for a Kenosha car dealership. He ended up shooting two unarmed protesters dead and blowing off another’s right bicep — without committing a crime.

Or so a Wisconsin jury found on Friday. After three and half days of deliberation, the jurors found that Rittenhouse was not guilty of reckless homicide, intentional homicide, or recklessly endangering public safety. This verdict was legally defensible. Yet it also exposed the anarchy latent in America’s peculiar combination of lax gun regulations, expansive self-defense rights, and mass gun ownership.

Before examining the substance of Rittenhouse’s defense, it’s worth reviewing the case’s undisputed facts. Bystanders’ cell-phone videos establish that 36-year-old protester Joseph Rosenbaum chased Rittenhouse into a parking lot, shouted “Fuck you!,” and threw a plastic bag at his back; that a different protester fired a gun into the sky, and immediately following this shot, Rittenhouse ceased fleeing and turned around; that Rosenbaum then moved toward Rittenhouse, who proceeded to fire four times.

Those shots attracted the attention of nearby demonstrators. One ran up behind Rittenhouse and hit him in the head, another kicked the gunman to the ground. Then, 26-year-old Anthony Huber whacked Rittenhouse with a skateboard and appeared to reach for his rifle; Rittenhouse shot Huber through the heart, instantly killing him. Gaige Grosskreutz, 28, approached and pointed a handgun at Rittenhouse; Rittenhouse nearly blew Grosskreutz’s right arm off.

In Wisconsin, as in most U.S. states, the prosecution bears the burden of disproving self-defense claims beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, at his trial, Rittenhouse did not need to prove that each shooting in Kenosha was an act of self-defense; the prosecution needed to prove that this was not the case.

Under Wisconsin law, you can kill people in self-defense if you reasonably believe that doing so is necessary to spare yourself or others from imminent bodily harm or death. This belief need not be accurate. Nor must it be reasonable from an objective perspective. It only needs to be reasonable from the subjective point of view of the shooter in the moment he or she pulls the trigger. [Continue reading…]