What follows is a conversation that might have taken place in the Rittenhouse home on the night of August 25th, 2020. Not knowing Kyle Rittenhouse or his mom, it is extremely unlikely I was there to record the conversation verbatim.
Mom: “Yes?”
Kyle: “I'm going out.”
Mom: “Oh. Where're you going?”
Kyle: “Kenosha.”
Mom: “Okay. What's going on up there?”
Kyle: “People are rioting after a recent police shooting. I thought I'd grab my AR-15 and assist in bringing law and order to a troubled community and in so doing, protect America.”
Mom: “Okay, honey. You know where it is?”
Kyle: “No.”
Mom: “That's because you never put it back where it belongs. Can you start to work on that?”
Kyle: (sighs) “Yeeesssss.”
Mom: “It's in the hall closet. You have ammunition?”
Kyle: (pause) “No.”
Mom: (sighs) “How old are you?”
Kyle: (exasperatedly) “Moommm...”
Mom: “There's a new carton of shells on the workbench in the garage. You know where that is?”
(Kyle sighs)
A door slams.
Mom: (under her breath) “The world was gonna end if he didn't get that dad-gum gun for Christmas. And now that he has it, he doesn't know where it is half the time. Lord almighty.”
A door opens and closes. Kyle re-enters the room.
Kyle: “Okay, mom. I'm going.”
Mom: “Okay, honey. You all set?”
Kyle: “Locked and loaded.”
Mom: “Be careful! Home by midnight!”
Kyle: (resignedly) “Okay.”
And so it was that seventeen year-old Kyle Rittenhouse set out and made the drive from Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin. Stuffed with right-wing propaganda, young Rittenhouse (the very definition of a cop wanna-be) was going to patrol the streets of Kenosha just like a real, live cop.
Except he wasn't one.
If you're keeping score at home, Rittenhouse was prohibited from possessing a firearm in the state of Wisconsin, much less parading down the street with one in an urban fire zone. In the most unassailable example of white privilege I can imagine, Rittenhouse was reportedly welcomed by the law enforcement on-site.
Can you imagine had he been Black?
Strolling through that socioeconomic divide, Rittenhouse attracted the consternation of various onlookers. Despite Rittenhouse's claims that he was there in a quote-unquote medical capacity, the sight of a white guy carrying an assault rifle sent an unmistakable message to those around him.
Can you say vigilante?
As they always do, the presence of a gun exacerbated the situation. Inflamed it. Escalated it. If you're even a moderately-literate person, you know none of those words are good things in the middle of an already-volatile civic uprising.
Rightly concerned that Rittenhouse was there to administer right-wing justice, several onlookers attempted to take his gun away. Rittenhouse reacted to this self-created drama by killing two of them.
Naturally, he claimed self-defense.
“They were trying to take away my assault rifle which had no business being there in the first place!” remains the fullest, most-complete version of his would-be testimony.
With conspiracy and pre-meditation difficult to prove, I'm hoping Rittenhouse gets hit with two counts of second-degree murder. Whatever pity I feel for him is in having a mom as clueless as she was spineless, and existing in a void of sound parental guidance.
Consequently, he fell prey to propaganda that led him to believe he could achieve the status he craved by possessing a gun. Guess you know better now, don't you Kyle? And if you don't—all the more reason to keep you behind bars for a long, long time.
You took two things that night you can't ever give back.
But that really isn't important, is it? What's really important is that a gun could be put into your hands—above all else. Because if one couldn't, we would be a lawless, heathen civilization at the mercy of bad guys with guns. (Not to mention naive, not-so-bright guys that think they're cops.)
Yeah.
God bless America.
