The acquittal on all counts in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial has far reaching implications on many fronts.
Rittenhouse faced charges of first-degree reckless homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety after he shot and killed two people and injured a third. This occurred on the second night of civil unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin on August 25, 2020.
Second Amendment advocates will now continue to claim that their rights to bear arms extend to vigilantism even when their assistance by local and national law enforcement officials is neither needed nor requested.
In addition, claims to “self-defense” in the use of lethal force are now further confirmed to be extensive, even when there is evidence that less violent options could have been attempted.
Though a victory for the Second Amendment, simultaneously, this was a blow to our First Amendment rights to “freedom of speech…or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
A message the verdict communicates is that no one is safe attending a protest rally. Another message is that Black lives and the White lives who support Black lives still do not matter in the United States.
Kyle Rittenhouse, as a 17-year-old, crossed state lines with a long rifle (a semi automatic AR-15), and he claimed at trial he was there to assist local police officers in Kenosha, Wisconsin to help defuse potential civil unrest at a Black Lives Matter protest demonstration in the police killing of Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man.
Positioning himself after taking the stand at trial as the quintessential white Christian choir boy and as a Boy Scout, helper of the needy and the sick, he talked about his interest in saving lives and supporting law enforcement officers and firefighters.
Rittenhouse, however, was certainly no Christian choir boy. As reported by MSNBC News:
The day he pleaded not guilty to felony homicide, Rittenhouse flashed a white supremacist symbol and was “loudly serenaded” by a group of men at a bar who belted out the anthem of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, according to prosecutors.
The report continued:
On the night of the shooting, minutes before Rittenhouse opened fire, police in Kenosha thanked the rifle-toting teen and offered him water as he walked the streets. ‘We appreciate you guys, we really do,’ one officer told him.
I seriously doubt whether any officers would have praised Rittenhouse had he contained higher amounts of melanin in his skin.
Topics of race and racism have reverberated since the police shooting of Jacob Blake, and in the killing and injuring of three of the demonstrators at the rally protesting Blake’s murder.
But where are the analytic investigations on topics of gender and gender expression?
Kyle Rittenhouse, a young man of modest physical stature strutted at nighttime through the streets of Kenosha toting his engorged giant erect penile extension in vigilante formation. At trial, he was asked why he had bought and carried an AR-15. His answer was that “it looked cool.”
By now, semiautomatic rifles have long been a highly praised fashion accessory for those attempting hypermasculinity.
Clearly, Rittenhouse attended the rally looking for trouble.
In the year 2015 alone, of the over 50,000 shooting incidents in the United States, including approximately 350 categorized as “mass shootings” of four or more victims, men, mostly white men, committed the overwhelming majority.
The Violence Project, a nonpartisan research group that tracks U.S. mass shooting data dating back to 1966, has estimated that 98% of these crimes of violence have been perpetrated by males.
As NPR has reported,
…researchers say that men, more than women, tend to externalize their problems and look for others to blame, which can translate into anger and violence. And when women do choose violence, guns are not typically their weapon of choice.’
Our society promotes what most of us have been very consciously and carefully taught throughout our lives. Gender roles (sometimes called sex roles) include the set of socially-defined roles and behaviors assigned to the sex we are assigned at birth. This can and does vary from culture to culture.
Our society recognizes basically two distinct gender roles. One is the “masculine,” having the qualities and characteristics attributed to males. The other is the “feminine,” having the qualities and characteristics attributed to females.
A third gender role, rarely condoned in our society, at least for those assigned “male” at birth, is “androgyny” combining assumed male (andro) and female (gyne) qualities.
The current generation is contesting gender-based roles and has provided options for our expressions, including conceptions of “gender non-binary” and “gender queer.”
But to paraphrase James Carville, a chief advisor to President Bill Clinton:
It’s the firearms and permissive firearms laws, stupid!
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This post is republished on Medium.
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