Chilling effect on demonstrations. If you attend one were someone starts shooting you become an accomplice. And ofcourse this also leaves the door open for a "false flag" incident.
Was this a "demonstration" though? They turned up to a detention center in the middle of the night and launched an attack clearly with the intention of getting past the gate (text message exchanges show they had scoped out the operations of the gate, how long it takes to open/close, how long it remains open, etc). That's not really a "demonstration", no one outside of the facility would even see it. Demonstrations should be in public view, not in the dead of night dressed all in black and armed to the teeth in an area where the public is expressedly forbidden.
Per Wikipedia, at least at one point in time, it was supposed to be. Quote:
Prosecutors produced group chat logs showing that the participants had debated at length whether they should bring guns. The former reservist allegedly wrote that "Cops are not trained or equipped for more than one rifle, so it tends to make them back off." Other chat participants argued that a noise demonstration was low risk and the assumptions about how police would respond were "way over the top".
Americans are given the right to bear arms so they can overthrow a tyrannical government. Doesn't mean the government has to sit there and take it. And it certainly doesn't mean you can shoot cops and get away with it.
The USA is a common law system, so some actions have precedence, and shape how laws are applied. (hence why the supreme court is able to have split opinions about the 14th amendment)
If you are able to use a stungun on a cop and get a pardon, then why not this? (actually pardons are usually not precedent setting, but forgive the stupid legal interpretation. )
That's really hard to swallow when the current president, who is responsible for the extreme uptick in ICE activity, pardoned 1,600 people who conspired against the federal government in favor of his agenda, but then that same government hands life-ruining prison sentences to people who weren't even present for conspiring against ICE.
Especially when the crux of this entire case was that the convicted are members of a terrorist organization - a fact that was declared at the whim of this same president.
I'm not saying that some of the people convicted don't deserve consequences for their actions, especially violence like shooting at officers. I'm not saying that this was a lawful assembly, especially given the documented intent to breach the facility and use pyrotechnics offensively. I am saying that this is an extreme escalation in action against dissent against the Republican agenda, with a highly visible inequality in enforcement against those who dissent similarly against the Democratic agenda.
If this kind of heavy-handed action was taken against everyone who challenges our government, I would still be concerned, but it is doubly concerning that some members of our society appear to have the permission to do these things, while we destroy the lives of others with different politics.
One obvious distinction is that Tarrio was convicted of leading & planning the Proud Boys operation on Jan 6 while this defendant was convicted of moving zines. Tarrio wasn’t at the insurrection on Jan 6 because he’d already been barred from traveling to the city…
And he got less of a sentence. I don’t think your argument equating these 2 is arguing what you think it is.
Zines related to a shootout and murder by an armed group after retrieving them from the home of one of the parties involved, discussing it on a jail call, and placing them in a third person's apartment.
Following that principle, Bin Laden wouldn't be responsible for 9/11, ISIS shouldn't have been restricted or attacked in any way, and the mafia should be fully legal. That would be absurd.
I only have the .gov version, but 20-30 rounds were fired, Song was convicted as the attacker apparently and Baumann and Morris were evidently armed as well (the woods gunmen). It wasn’t the whole group but doesn’t appear to be just one individual.
They were successfully tied together by the prosecution as conspirators to the satisfaction of juries by their shared mission, chats, organization, papers, safe houses, and prior meetings among other things.
Are ICE detentions legal? Is what ICE under the current administration behaving legally? The shooting an officer is the one crime, assuming the protestor wasn't shot at first. This administration has repeatedly lied about these sort of events, so I have a hard time believing the official account.
Obviously because the nature of demonstrations as you describe are predicated on a counter party that follows the law.
For example one may demonstrate to get a law changed, on the premise that they will not be shot on sight or otherwise extrajudically punished for assembling. Why would you expect entities of the state that behave illegally to engender an opposition to follow legal norms?
This is not new in America. 250 years ago the Declaration was preceded by the olive branch. To the people that founded this country, the distinction meant everything.
If you're fighting the executive branch, then legality goes out the window and any outrage about punishment becomes moot, no?
Expecting the system you intended to subvert/dismantle to save you is a bit of a weird ask.
> If you're fighting the executive branch, then legality goes out the window
No it doesn’t. It’s enshrined in the constitution. The entire point of the United States is to be able to change the system. I’m struggling to imagine a worse take than this.
Not at all? To the American founders that would be a psychotic take that is completely at odds with the founding principles of this country.
Have you read about the Continental Congress? They thought pretty hard about these questions. They did not engage in insurrection (what would surely today be called "terrorism") against the crown lightly and without great consideration.
You should take the opportunity of the 250th anniversary to educate yourself as opposed to writing such comments. Nothing about your comment makes any sense in almost any legal context, in America or otherwise. How could something like laws of armed conflict even be comprehensible under your standard? Truly I am sad for the state of your mind that you wrote such a comment.
I'm sorry, I meant in terms of discussion, not in terms of legal proceedings. Obviously these people were formally charged in a court of law on legal grounds and I assume had their constitutional rights afforded to them.
I meant more along the lines of "30 years for hiding a zine" being a weird take. It is logically inconsistent, IMO, to both want to fight a system, and want to be afforded its privileges.
No, you're operating within the confines of the system when you vote to change it. Voting to change the system, in the US, is part of the system. By fighting I meant in ways outside of the system. To me its saying both "the system does not apply to me" and "the system should apply to me in a nicer way".
I disagree if only because the clarification you make in your first two sentences doe not square with your last sentence.
Why do we read people their rights or formally charge them? If someone has committed a crime is that not in some sense "fighting [the] system"? Why would then the same apparent contradiction you highlight in your last sentence not arise?
Even in cases of extreme conflict, there is a certain base state of "rights" or "privileges" one wants to be afforded, and it is not contradictory of people to do so. See the laws of armed conflict. Even if someone is a complete psychopath and doesn't respect these laws, the law itself usually does not respond in kind.
That is the nature of the law. If the law could allow for a situation where "legality goes out the window and any outrage about punishment becomes moot" then its no longer law. The only state this exists is one of anarchy. Far more likely in some situation would be the state tries to exercise some emergency power, itself sanctioned by law. In such an extreme case the contradiction no longer applies because the "privileges" have been legally suspended. However, now society has entered a dubious state re the nature of the law itself. Alternatively, take the Codes of Hammurabi. But then the proposed contradiction also does not apply. For in an eye for an eye there are far less afforded privileges to appeal to.
A state of dubious legality was essentially the state of affairs that convinced the founders revolution was inevitable. But there was never - and is usually never - a state where "legality goes out the window". That is anarchy. Even if the founders had lost, surely they would have a right to be outraged if instead of simply being hung (as was the legal remedy for their acts at the time) the British soldiers had rioted and killed all of them and their families on sight.
There is no contradiction here. It would not be a "weird take". Frankly if some among them were also outraged at being hung, I'm not sure that is a "weird take" either. It certainly doesn't strike me as "logically inconsistent". Its not like the "privileges" of life and liberty are granted by the government after all. If you believe in the principles as the founders did, those rights are given by a power beyond that of any terrestrial government. You may be deprived of them by such an entity, but it is not something the state gave you. Therefore once again, your proposed contradiction doesn't really make sense. I guess your position boils down to "if you do wrong against someone, you should have no expectations about your treatment in return"? But I don't think this is ever actually seriously considered as an ethical position when it comes to a people and their government. At least not since divine right and the like went out of fashion. At the end of the day, one can both transgress and be entitled to outrage about how the state acts in response. I fail to see how the alternative is anything less than barbarism.
> If someone has committed a crime is that not in some sense "fighting [the] system"?
Of course not. I'm speaking directly about intent. It's pretty obvious to me that most crime is committed without any intent regarding "the system".
> Even in cases of extreme conflict, there is a certain base state of "rights" or "privileges" one wants to be afforded, and it is not contradictory of people to do so. See the laws of armed conflict. Even if someone is a complete psychopath and doesn't respect these laws, the law itself usually does not respond in kind.
Well yeah, but again, I'm not explaining this well, I'm not saying they shouldn't expect or want due process. At issue here is "30 years is too much for X". That's not "my rights are being violated", that's "the system is being especially mean to me with respect to applying the law to me with maximum force".
I think they can expect every legal protection due and that's fine, but the outrage at getting the book thrown at them when they were trying to burn the book is what I find strange.
> But there was never - and is usually never - a state where "legality goes out the window".
My wording was really bad. I didn't mean the state shouldn't follow the law, I just meant on a logical basis the "fight the power, wait no, not that power" position becomes inconsistent IMO.
How completely dishonest to call this a demonstration. They brought guns and shot government officials. Trying to kill people you disagree with isn't demonstrating, it's terrorism.
Only Benjamin Song, convicted of attempted murder/discharging a firearm, shot the police officer. Some others didn't bring firearms, were not in any planning chat (in which no violence was planned regardless), weren't at the protest or had already left, yet still received absurdly harsh sentences - that's the chilling effect.
Nobody conspired to shoot a cop. People just happened to exert their First Amendment rights close to where it happened and got punished for speaking the wrong kind of speech.
This is an oversimplification. I am not in favor of shooting the police in the neck but I absolutely will not tolerate an hindering of peaceful first amendment expression even when it happens in proximity to violence. What are the police even protecting us from at that point?
Domestic terrorists who shoot people in the neck. Among millions of things that the government claims to protect mw from, this is one of a few things that I don't doubt I want to be protected from. There's absolutely zero free speech issues here.
One might consider ICE detention centers to be morally equivalent to concentration camps. This sounds like the federal government trying to protect a controversial agency and immigration policy under the current regime, not ordinary citizens. The man who got 30 years wasn't there and didn't fire a gun.
One might consider a lot of things. But if you are at shooting war with United States government, then when United States government puts your away, you don't get to claim it's a free speech issue. You can't sit on those two chairs at once. Either you are a Warrior of Light battling the Nazis, and then it's way beyond free speech, or it's a public discussion and then "free speech" does not include shooting people. You can't claim both. If you're "ordinary citizen", you don't get to shoot at police, or you go to jail, and everybody who helps you does too. If you're a brave revolutionary, then we have a violent revolution, and it's not about "free speech" anymore, revolution is way beyond speech.
Seven of the people jailed did not shoot the police officer or “assisted” the shooter in any form. They just happened to participate in the protest and share political affinity.
The “crime” investigation obstructed by hiding the zines is being left-wing. That has no actual relation to the shooting. That is 100% a free speech issue.
They were the part of the organized criminal group that executed the shooting and later tried to help other criminals to avoid responsibility. If you are part of the group that does the crime, everybody in the group shares the responsibility (not equally, some part of it extends to accomplices) - not only she immediate shooter, but people who helped him to do it too.
> The “crime” investigation obstructed by hiding the zines is being left-wing.
That's nonsense. There are literally tens of millions of people in the country that are left wing (including literal communists openly calling for destruction of the United States and Western civilization). As long as they don't get violent, they don't have any trouble for it - in fact, some of them even win elections (including literal communists openly calling for destruction of the United States and Western civilization). The recipe is very simple - do not shoot people. Unfortunately, for the part of the left-wing, this is somehow too hard. They think shooting people who are not left-wing is A-OK. Those people need to be stopped, and putting them in jail for a long time is a good way to stop them. Not for their speech, but for the fact that speech is not good enough for them, and they choose violence.
Doesn't matter how they morally equivocate. The reasonable way to address this is through voting and the legal system. If you want to start shooting people, then prepare for a well-deserved, long prison sentence.
" If you want to start shooting people, then prepare for a well-deserved, long prison sentence."
* unless you're a law-enforcement officer, in which case folks like laughing_man are totally okay with you killing folks for vandalism because it upholds the legal system.
Unless you're an ICE agent. Then it's okay to execute citizens who are exercising their Constitutional rights.
There is an inherent tension here in wanting the rule of law and peaceful democracy to prevail instead of political violence. But the reality is that doesn't always happen. Slavery wasn't ended with a vote, neither was the rule of King George over the colonies. Civil Rights weren't granted to black folks without a lot of civil disobedience and violent responses by the local authorities.
Hopefully the next administration will abolish ICE and will seriously reform immigration policies peacefully for the benefit of migrants and citizens alike.
This isn't to defend shooting at a police officer, but the framing by the administration and the right is this was the result of a dangerous left-wing terrorist organization, not a response to lawless actions by ICE spurred on by the administration, and how it's hurting people being ripped away from their lives because officials like Stephen Miller hate non-white immigrants.
And again, it was one person who did the shooting, not the dude who got 30 years for moving some written material.
There was never an argument that the 30 second clip shows self defense.
The problem is that Kyle drove out of his way with a non-defensive firearm, with a clear intent to put himself in that situation so he could murder someone.
Let's say I want to experience killing someone without consequences. I leave a nice bike completely unlocked in the bad part of town and hide in the shadows, then when someone tries to steal it, I axe them in the back of the head. I'm clearly a criminal guilty of first degree murder, not a victim of theft.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much nuance the American legislative system has for cases like those. Let alone when exposed to the biases our executive/judicial systems have when executing them.
Where was this clear intent demonstrated? There was no evidence of them acting agressive or baiting people.
- There was photo evidence that he spent the morning cleaning grafitti of a shool in Kenosha.
- Multiple independent journalists testified they were calm and walking around calling "Medic! Does anyone need medical help?" or helping put out fires
- Independet protestors tesitfed that Rittenhouse helped them bandage injured
Regarding the bike, that would be murder. If you walked with your fancy bike and put yourself between it an a theif who attacked you for it, the answer would depend by state. Some let you stand your ground, some you have to flee until you are cornered.
It is still valid self defense if you choose walk your bike through the neighborhood knowing with certiany you will be attacked. If you are legally allowed to be there, the fault is still with the attacker.
he drove to a town he worked in that's not out of the way. 2 of the 3 who attacked him drove similar distances or further and one of them had an illegal fire arm, were they all putting themselves in a situation to murder someone?
Who are you referring to? For clarification it was Rittenhouse who cleaned graffiti, not any of the victims, which seems to support the grandparents argument.
If it was illegal to go somewhere "lookin for trouble" I think that you would see a whole lot of people arrested from certain groups that you likely wouldn't want to be in prison.
Yeah I agree people should not go to protests with the objective to harm or destroy.
I dont think that is really the major party dividing line tho. I dont think most of the right thinks they went there with intention to harm, but to "defend".
I also think many people on the "left" take issue with someone putting themselved in a situation that could require lethal self defense, particularly over property.
If someone on the left killed right wing protestors that person would not be treated like a celebrity. The reason why not is simply that violence isn't celebrated on the left like it is on the right.
With the exception of Luigi and I think that's more generational than left vs right.
In the interest of shedding light, not fire - I dont think the right view the deceased as protesters. They view them as attempted murderers and people destorying their community. I think this is fundamental and explains a lot.
I think if you reversed the roles, you would get much the same reaction.
Lets say you get some militia marching in the street, lighting cars on fire, vandalizing schools and businesses. Then one of the marchers chases down a counter protesters saying "im going to kill you", corners them, but gets blasted.
I think there would be a lot of rallying around the shooter if people wanted to try them for murder. People would say they were just taking out the trash and the deceased FAFO'ed.
Why would you think this is even relevant? He lived close to the border, and stayed within the same metro area.
> attend a protest with a gun he didn't personally own
This was not illegal.
> If that was self defense, so was this case
So were the judge and jury just corrupt? Did you watch the videos of him being threatened and attacked, including by someone (Grosskreutz), who also had a gun?
One can also let themselves be misled by the media for political reasons.
If you actually watched the trial and reviewed the publicly available evidence, and still think the jury made the wrong decision, then I agree, you have a right to that opinion.
However, if you only believed he is guilty because your favorite media figures told you this, then I would say you don't actually believe that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
