No Guns, No Gunshots

Yesterday’s news of Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal was both expected but also frustrating. The question wasn’t whether or not Rittenhouse shot three men and killed two, but whether or not he did so in self-defense. As Farhad Manjoo mentions in this opinion piece, the problem with Rittenhouse’s “self-defense” defense is that it’s based on circular logic: Rittenhouse brought a gun with him (and not just any gun, but an assault rifle) to make him feel safe from protesters, but he was worried that the protesters would overpower him and use his own rifle against him. Thus, he shot three people to protect himself from being shot by the gun he brought to project himself.

Again, the question isn’t whether or not he shot three people. Those are facts. But by focusing so intently on the context of those shootings it feels like we’re missing the forest for the trees — regardless of why Rittenhouse shot three people and ended two of their lives, he shot three people and ended two of their lives. Isn’t that the part we should be focusing on?

Now, I know how important context is. I’ve written several blog posts emphasizing the need to examine context. So let me be clear: I’m not saying that context isn’t important in the Rittenhouse case. What I am saying is that when people are dead because of someone’s (completely uncontested!) actions, I think the context matters less than the loss of life. Not only because taking someone else’s life is final and irrevocable, but also because the dead can’t testify. Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber aren’t alive to share their side of the story. We are, by nature of the crime, unable to gain a greater context.

However, it’s also helpful to think about what primed Rittenhouse for the moment when he fatally shot Rosenbaum and Huber and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz. Why was it that he felt his life was in danger? Why did he feel like he had no choice but to act in self-defense? These factors are just as important since they help to explain the context of why he resorted to firing his rifle.

Earlier this week, the House of Representatives censured Arizona congressman Paul Gosar for retweeting a video clip of an anime where Gosar’s face is photoshopped onto a character who murders a villain with the face of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. (Fun fact: Minutes after his censure, he retweeted the same video again!)

Gosar hasn’t apologized for his actions and instead seems to be doubling down. He claims the censure is an act of theater. He also invokes the Charlie Hebdo massacre, where two Muslim brothers shot 23 people at the satricial magazine, killing 12. One of the main motives for the attack is thought to be the cartoons Charlie Hebdo had run depicting the picture of Muhammad. Here’s what Gosar said in his statement: “I remind everyone that pretending to be upset over a cartoon and wanting to suppress the ideas in a cartoon is what happened to the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France. All right-thinking people condemned that then, and they should condemn the Democrats now for their violation of free speech.”

That’s a lot to unpack. Let’s start with everyone who was “pretending” to be upset. This is a very casual way to dismiss cartoons that many Muslims would find offensive. It’s like if someone were to release a series of cartoons about Jesus as a trans woman. There might be more than a few Christians who would “pretend” to be upset about that. So just because you yourself aren’t offended doesn’t mean that other people are pretending to be offended.

Next, I don’t think the Charlie Hebdo analogy works in Gosar’s favor. He says that “wanting to suppress the ideas in a cartoon is what happened,” but that’s a strange read on the situation. First, it’s not like the Charlie Hebdo shooting was a result of a single cartoon. Charlie Hebdo had gained a lot of attention as a result of publishing controversial cartoons “which made jokes about Islamic leaders as well as Muhammad.” Charlie Hebdo, like Gosar, rather enjoyed riling people up. And it was the repeated mocking, the repeated dismissing, the repeated demeaning that eventually led to the shooting — in addition to the desire to suppress or censor the cartoons. So, if anything, what Gosar proves when he invokes Charlie Hebdo is that behavior such as his own does, in fact, incite violence.

Finally, there’s the part of Gosar’s statement where he says, “All right-thinking people [I have to give him props for the poetic use of diction there!] condemned that then, and they should condemn the Democrats now for their violation of free speech.” This is a clever bit of rhetoric, but let’s look at it a little closer. If people were condemning the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, it was because offensive cartoons led to violence. The cartoons shouldn't have caused 12 people to die, but nor should the cartoons have been so brazenly controversial. Just because you have free speech doesn’t mean you need to say the worst, most offensive things you can simply because you can, and you certainly have no reason to say those things repeatedly. As much as Gosar wants it to be, the Charlie Hebdo massacre isn’t a simple instance of “censorship = bad,” and the Democrats trying to put a stop to offensive language aren’t the villains here — they’re the only ones behaving responsibly.

Which brings us to the larger picture. Many Republican politicians have adopted a mentality where if they do or say something offensive, the problem isn’t with what they’ve said or done, it’s with the person who ends up feeling offended. This is coupled with a feeling of being attacked or targeted or oppressed any time their views or actions are challenged. Both of these mindsets meld together to make Democrats look and feel like the enemy. The ridiculously stupid video Gosar retweeted is hardly the problem — it’s what the video is indicative of that’s problematic. Gosar either refuses to acknowledge or is completely blind to the effect a piece of propaganda like that has on his followers.

And this is what I believe primed Kyle Rittenhouse the night of August 25, 2020. He says he went to Kenosha to protect a car dealership from being vandalized, and I believe him. But I also think the media he was consuming prior to August 25 affected how he viewed the protest. Bringing a rifle to an already volatile situation wasn’t, in his mind, the problem — it was what other people could do with the rifle that was the problem. I can see how he felt like he was being attacked by those protesters even before another person — Joshua Ziminski — fired into the air and things turned violent and then deadly.

I can’t claim that if everyone involved in this incident didn’t have a gun then there wouldn’t have been any violence. It’s very possible Rittenhouse would’ve still been beaten up, that many of the people there that night might’ve ended up with broken bones and bruises. All I know for sure is that if you remove the firearms from the situation then no one would’ve gotten shot. For all this talk about context — about cause and effect — that seems like the easiest thing to explain.