The protests are largely peaceful and community-focused. It's a very small portion of them that result in violence like this. The social media myopia machine works hard to paint them as significantly violent movements. BLM is nonviolent, and the vast majority of their protests are nonviolent.
A very small portion that result in shooting deaths? I agree. The portion that result in chaos, rioting and looting is larger though. But I agree that #BLM is overwhelmingly non-violent however the problem is that these gatherings don't just attract #BLM activists, they attract all sorts from people like Rosenbaum with huge rap sheets to opportunistic ideologues like AntiFa.
For example, a lot of people were trying to condemn #BLM for what was going on in the Seattle "antonymous zone" but anybody who was following what was going on knew that #BLM had officially pulled out of that area way before it turned into a violent clusterfuck.
I don't doubt that the gunmen see themselves as noble; but I think they also probably perceive shooting rioters as noble. That's a problem.
If this were the case, a lot more rioters would be getting shot. It just isn't happening. On the contrary, anybody who attempts to oppose the rioting unarmed gets knocked out, sucker punched, kicked in the face while unconscious, mobbed etc. By contrast the people who did successfully oppose rioters and looters with a firearm often only needed to fire warning shots or brandish it because most people when confronted with a weapon tend to comply.
Also just to reiterate, nobody in Kenosha was shot for rioting that I know of.
That was wordy--basically, yes, there are nonviolent scenarios in which guns are present. But this doesn't mean that guns don't actively contribute to escalations of violence, and that said violence (especially in cases of mortality) couldn't have been avoided even if the guns were hypothetically removed from the situation. This probably seems tautological, and to a degree it is. To put this in more contextual terms, I think that had Rittenhouse not been present in Kenosha there would have been no increase in violence, but rather a decrease. Even if his victims hadn't been there, the odds are still much greater that we would have seen similar violence--simply because he was there with a gun.
I disagree. I think if Joseph Rosenbaum, a man who had spent the greater part of his life in and out of prison and clearly had an aggressive disposition whether he started it or not, hadn't been there and attempted to assault Rittenhouse which resulted in him being shot, that night would have been a lot less violent.
I already agreed that a firearm contributes to escalation of violence (openly carrying is a statement of intent to use deadly force in self-defense or defense of others). It doesn't enter a situation neutrally. If you attempt to assault someone who is armed, especially if they have a rifle on a sling, you will be shot. You cannot get into a melee scrap with someone with a rifle on a sling. At the very least it would be difficult to do so. It will go from hands to bullets, that is the escalation.
If Kyle Rittenhouse had instead concealed a pistol to take with him and someone tried to fight him and he shot them, I might have more sympathy for your argument because at the very least it would be reasonable to assume they did so without knowledge of Kyle's ability to escalate force in self-defense. If you do what Rosenbaum did however, and chase him beyond all reasonable reaction to at best brandishing, you're expressing intent to do harm
in spite of an AR-15.
That's another example of nobody claiming a gun is a neutral element and ineffectual situationally. If you attack someone who is openly carrying a rifle, it has implications about your state of mind.
Only 3 dudes got shot right? And all by Kyle?
Weird thing is he was very controlled yet there was something unique to him that brought out lethal violence.
Yeah 3 people. He shot less people than the amount of people who attacked him that night.
