No Sympathy For A Cold-Blooded Killer

Posted on by under Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

A 17-year-old punk leaves his home in Illinois, travels to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where there are protests against the police brutality that left Jacob Blake paralyzed from the waist down, and walks up and down the street carrying an assault rifle.  Seventeen years old.  He should be home studying, or working at the local McDonald’s to save for college, but instead he is about to become a cold-blooded killer.  He did not have a permit for the gun, and in fact was too young to obtain one … he was not legally allowed to have that weapon in his possession.

As Kyle Rittenhouse walked down the streets of Kenosha with another armed man, a police officer in an armoured vehicle asked him if he needed some water, then tossed him a bottle of water, saying, “We appreciate you guys, we really do.”  A short time later, Kyle Rittenhouse used his AR-15 to shoot three people, two of whom died.  Since police were all over the place, it only makes sense that he was arrested on the spot, right?  But no … even though at this point, people were shouting to the police that he was the shooter, and even though he walked right up to the police, police officers simply waved him away and told him to get off the streets!  He returned to his home in Antioch, Illinois, a short time later, without any interference from law enforcement in Wisconsin.  He was arrested by Antioch police the following afternoon.

Kyle Rittenhouse would have been shot dead on the spot by police if he had been a black teenager instead of a white one.  But wait … for it gets even worse.

It may have started with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson when, rather than condemning a 17-year-old killer, he attempted to justify it …

“So, are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder? How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would? Everyone could see what was happening in Kenosha. It was getting crazier by the hour.”

Or perhaps it started with the Facebook post by Arthur Love, a member of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s staff, sympathizing with Rittenhouse, saying in one post …

“I’m grateful that conservatives are rallying behind this kid. He genuinely seems like a good person.”

A “good person”???  Good people do not even own assault weapons, let alone go looking for an excuse to kill!!!  Mr. Love was fired on Saturday, and rightly so.

Wherever and however it started, there is growing support for this 17-year-old murderer, and funds have even been started to help pay his legal fees!  One fundraiser, on a Christian crowdfunding website called Give Send Go, raised more than $65,000 as of last Thursday evening. People have donated $7,460 to the teen through a site called Free Kyle Rittenhouse.

GoFundMe, one of the most popular and widely used crowdfunding websites, has taken down multiple fundraisers for Rittenhouse. GoFundMe spokesperson Angelique McNaughton said Thursday the platform removed the fundraisers because they violated GoFundMe’s terms of service which specifically forbids people from using the platform to raise money for “the implicit or explicit purpose of or involving for the legal defense of alleged crimes associated with hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance of any kind relating to race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, serious disabilities or diseases, financial crimes or crimes of deception.”

And, according to an article in The Guardian …

“Fundraisers, messages of support and celebratory memes for the alleged Kenosha, Wisconsin, mass shooter are being shared widely on Facebook and Instagram, despite the company’s assurance on Wednesday that it was working to enforce its policy banning content that “praises, supports, or represents” mass shooters.

One fundraiser for Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, was shared more than 17,700 times on Facebook, including by 291 public groups and pages with more than 3.9m aggregate followers, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned data analytics tool. A second fundraiser garnered 1,698 shares on the platform, including by an additional 17 pages and groups with nearly 400,000 followers.”

I encourage you to read the entire article, for it is truly shocking.

This, perhaps more than anything else, defines what is wrong in this nation today.  That people have empathy for a young punk using an assault weapon to kill people is … well, it just blows my mind.  Personally, I would like to see him tried, convicted, and spend the rest of his life in prison.  I would also like to see his parents pay a price, for it is obvious to me that they failed miserably in raising this child.  Since he was only seventeen, he was legally still under their guardianship, and it seems to me they must share some of the blame.

Rittenhouse claims it was self-defense, but he went there looking for trouble, so the self-defense argument simply does not fly.  How can people support this punk?  How can anyone justify what he did?  Those who can, it seems obvious to me, are people who value their guns more than human life, people who believe in vigilante justice, and people who are, at the core, white supremacists.  They are part of what is wrong in this nation today, and is likely to get worse before it gets better.

28 thoughts on “No Sympathy For A Cold-Blooded Killer”

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  6. well what do you know, it turns out that he didn’t take a gun across state lines after all so will you print a retraction disevowing the blatantly false information you posted? If the president comes out against this kid as a lot of these lunatics have, it will bias a jury and that should be illegal.

    Like

    • Well, Scott, let us start with the fact that I did not even mention whether or not Rittenhouse carried the gun across state lines, so I have nothing to retract. Then let’s move to the fact that it’s irrelevant whether he brought the gun from Illinois or got it from a friend in Kenosha because either way, he was not of legal age to be carrying an automatic weapon and had no permit to do so. And lastly, my main point was that this kid came looking for trouble and killed two people. Period. Yes, it appears that others attacked him trying to take his weapon, but they did NOT have guns. Rittenhouse was at an advantage anyway. He isn’t a good kid, Scott … he is a killer. So no, I’ve written nothing that has been disproven thus far. In fact, I could have gone much deeper in my post, like the kid’s background, but I chose not to muddy the waters.

      Liked by 1 person

  7. Hello Jill. It is stunning to me the two different narratives about the situation. There is media spinning this to make the 17 year old a patriotic civic minded defender of other people and their property. In fact the social media of the 17 year old makes clear he had been radicalized by local militia members and was fervently against BLM / protesters. Not people doing illegal acts but all the BLM protesters. Fact is he was a social misfit with few friends and a low IQ who had somehow managed to drop out of school at around 15 years of age who desperately wanted to find a group to fit into. He found that in the right wing anti-protester groups and police cadet programs. He was primed to strut his stuff and show he was one of them.

    Rosenbaum and the suspect moved across the parking lot and appeared to be in close proximity when loud bangs suddenly rang out and Rosenbaum fell to the ground, according to the complaint.
    As Rosenbaum lay on the ground, the suspect made a call on his cellphone and said, “I just killed somebody” as he ran away, the complaint alleges. His friend received a call from him at 11:46 p.m. saying that he shot someone, an investigator says in the complaint.

    So there is no self defense claim as SPTV and right wing media want to assert, plus there is not a stand your ground law there so the 17 year old would have been required to run if threatened by Rosenbaum instead of shooting. I just checked and the christian crowdfunding page was over $261,000 for the kid. This whole affair did not have to happen, but the current administration is doing all they can to fan the flames of hate and get people so worked up they do start the civil war some of these groups have been so eager for. tRump wont be happy until both sides are shooting at each other like some dystopian movie. Hugs

    Liked by 1 person

    • Indeed, he is being hailed as some sort of a hero. This sickens me, disgusts me, for he was a punk who went to Kenosha looking for trouble. People cry about their tax dollars going to help poor families, yet they will waste their money contributing to the defense of this piece of human scum? And yeah, Trump has blood on his hands in this and so many more cases, for he praises white supremacist while denigrating minorities … and Rittenhouse had apparently attended a Trump rally or two, plus his mother drove him to Kenosha, so that tells us just about all we need to know about this family, yes? Sigh. Hugs

      Liked by 1 person

      • Hello Jill. One more question. Why are the right wing thugs / militia not described as counter protesters? They are not police, not in authority. Instead the media seems to be giving them an air or position of authority they do not posses while using the word protester as a negative, insinuating the protesters are bad people doing harmful actions. They are playing the right up as defenders , the BLM as destroyers. No wonder the left is losing even though we are the majority, we suck at messaging. We let the right control and assert the narrative. Hugs

        Liked by 1 person

        • I’m not sure, Scottie … I wish I could answer that question. The media is, I think, letting us down by labeling them all as simply ‘protestors’, when in truth, the majority of the ones causing the violence are members of white supremacist or neo-Nazi groups, not true BLM protestors. I heard Barr say today that there is no racism in the many police shootings of unarmed Black men and I wanted to bash his head. What country is HE living in??? Back to the point, though, I think the media are doing us a disservice by not labeling these jerks for what they are. I’m not sure if they are fearful, given Trump’s disdain for the free press, or what.

          Liked by 1 person

  8. That kid is darn lucky someone didn’t shoot him. It looks to me as though his parents are either Trump supporters or can’t manage him. Anyone carrying a gun should have been rounded up and put in jail to cool down. Their guns should have been impounded, the bullets removed, and not given back until they could legally be retrieved. The same with the paintball guns and other weapons. Trump is acting like a real stinker, a coward, a trouble maker. He reminds me of the school bullies in my old neighborhood. My dad and another father had to go and warn them to leave us girls alone. They weren’t picking on the boys as I remember. That’s a sign of the true coward. 😦 — Suzanne

    Liked by 2 people

    • Hello sklawlor. The web page is full of errors and right wing propaganda. For example the page says Joseph Rosenbaum is a convicted sex offender. This page doesn’t say where but other right wing pages do, including a doctored Wisconsin registry. So I found the Wisconsin Department of Corrections Sex Offender Registry and tried to find Rosenbaum. He is not listed. There were other inconsistencies but I figured that one should be correct first. Hugs

      Liked by 1 person

  10. Jill, celebrating someone who kills people as judge, jury and executioner is not Christian, nor is it moral. But, the person who invites, instigates, condones and celebrates is the head of the party. Pitting people against each other and doing the above to garner victory or gain is further evidence of sociopathic behavior. Adding his primary concern over perception at the expense of COVID-19 deaths and his narcissistic bent are additional factors. That is sad to say about the president of the US.

    Keith

    Liked by 2 people

    • It is a sad statement, indeed, and sadder is the number of people he has convinced of his false narrative. Can this situation continue escalating? And if so, what will remain once the fires finally burn themselves out?

      Like

  11. Pence and Trump even praised him at the RNC! U would think that’s political suicide, apparently not to many conservative senators and news pundits!
    Crazy how Trump’s numbers are going up after he supported this “nice young man”. WTF???
    Our city streets resemble war zones, boarded up store fronts along main st., businesses closing down permanently never to return. Sure you want to remain in the US after elections? No matter who wins…. SHTF.

    Liked by 2 people

  12. and there’s this, over half of the people arrested for rioting and looting were from out of the area which demonstrates that these protests are being organized in a way which is not organically generated.
    Now, like anything, there are a lot of peaceful protests out there and the media may cover some of them, maybe but those don’t induce shock, generate traffic and boost the ratings of the networks and generate revenue for the advertisers on those networks like the blood and gore do.
    For months, these mayors and governors have refused to do anything about the violence in their towns and most people are just fed up with the stupid idiotic pain in the ass lunatics who are out there causing mayhem around the country. I don’t care what color they are, I care about intention.
    None of this matters because it’s not within the narrative but I’m posting the link anyway. Maybe someone will actually consider the information.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. did you even bother to look into the records of the three people he shot or bother to do any research about the fact they were engaged in criminal activity at the time? No, you probably didn’t because that doesn’t go with the stupid narrative of how white people are the problem in this country.
    oh and you even admit that he got his gun illegally which just blows holes in the stupid gun control narrative. At least you got something right in this post.

    Liked by 2 people

    • Oh … I see. Because these three people had some kind of (I assume) negative records and were “engaged in criminal activity at the time,” that gives a 17-year-old with an unlicensed gun the authority to shoot them and KILL two of them. Death by personal judgement of a teen-age kid.

      Liked by 4 people

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