Once upon a time, I trained as an emergency medical technician (EMT). I wanted the training; never sought a job. The director of the county’s emergency medical services taught the class. In between lessons, he sometimes told war stories involving bars and alcohol. And weapons.
A couple of bars on the rough side of town we easily identified: places where on any Saturday night drivers might see ambulances and police cars out front with lights flashing. People got shot there. Men who frequented bars where people regularly got shot carried concealed handguns for defense in case some other drunk tried to shoot them. You know, because they had a right to defend themselves. The founders left an IQ requirement out of the 2nd Amendment.
This week in Kenosha, Wisc., a 17-year-old suspect caught on video killed two and wounded one with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle during street protests over the police shooting there of Jacob Blake. What prompted the first killing is unclear. A second man in pursuit of the suspect was killed trying to disarm the alleged shooter. Another pursuer — who may have had a weapon himself — was wounded. Kyle Rittenhouse, an Illinois resident, possessed the weapon illegally in Wisconsin. He took it upon himself to join local “militia” members on the streets of Kenosha. They took it upon themselves to come armed to patrol other people’s property because some protesters had turned to vandalism and arson. A few others carried weapons in support of peaceful protesters.
Events in Kenosha brought back those EMT war stories. That the U.S. has more firearms per capita than any other country is old news. But combine that with Rambo fantasies, open-carry policies, and street protests involving property destruction and you don’t need alcohol for things to go horribly wrong.
The Washington Post Editorial Board calls out the mayhem from this week:
There is no excuse and no justification for the kind of bedlam that has followed peaceful protests in Kenosha with street skirmishes, looting, burning and other destruction to businesses and buildings. Such needless violence — which unfortunately has accompanied some protests in other cities this summer as the country was racked by the killing of George Floyd — undermines instead of advances any cause. It must be unambiguously condemned.
It does not, however, give license to people to try to take matters — indeed, the law — into their own hands.
Tuesday’s tragic loss of lives brings into stark relief the dangers that are posed as armed militia-style groups and their sympathizers increasingly show up at protests and other political events. Experts who have tracked vigilante activity have warned about the volatile combination of powerful weapons in untrained hands at fraught political moments. Yet police in Kenosha seemingly encouraged armed civilians by thanking them for being there and handing out bottles of water, and Police Chief Daniel Miskinis seemed to blame the victims for their own deaths because they were on the streets after curfew. He went on to defend the militia groups as civilians out to protect property and “exercise their constitutional right.” Never mind they were also out on the streets after curfew. That conservative commentators such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter defended the teen with ridiculous remarks came as no surprise, but why was it so hard for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) to finally acknowledge to NPR that vigilantism shouldn’t be tolerated?
A question circulating online asks: Why is murder an appropriate response to property damage, but property damage isn’t an appropriate response to murder?
Conservatives are lining up behind the former to turn Rittenhouse into a 2nd Amendment folk hero. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern summarizes the pretzel logic:
If civilians try to seize a weapon from a gunman who just shot somebody in the head, that gunman has a right to shoot them. If this theory were legally correct—thankfully, it isn’t—then a person who tries to grab a mass shooter’s gun may be legally killed by the shooter himself.
Stern notes how quickly the narrative embraced by Carlson and Coulter takes hold:
After Jacob Blake’s shooting, conservative media hunted for evidence that might exonerate the officer, fixating on the presence of a knife in Blake’s car. After Rittenhouse shot three protesters, the right hunted for evidence that might exonerate the shooter, settling on the fantasy that those protesters were the real vigilantes who got what was coming to them. The lesson here is simple: A white man with a gun is innocent until proved guilty; his victims are guilty until proved innocent.
This morning here in the Cesspool of Sin, militia types from South Carolina plan to arrive with Confederate battle flags for the “Grand Flagging of Asheville.” Posts and accounts since removed by Facebook suggests they will bring weapons to defend themselves from nonexistent rioters tearing up the city. No doubt they are only coming from out of state (like the alleged Kenosha shooter) to patriotically defend property belonging to they know not whom. But they want everyone to know they are not racists. “We defend AMERICN HISTORY … we stand united in the defense of our culture!” That would be the brief, ignominious, traitorous history of the Confederate States of America, not the United States of America.
I could direct them to a few bars in Upstate South Carolina where they would be more than welcome. But this much is likely true: This will get much worse before November.
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