Kyle Rittenhouse (L) at a Kenosha protest before he fatally shot two unarmed men.
(Photo: Adam Rogan/The Journal Times via Associated Press)
James Abernathy
Sat, November 20, 2021,
Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges on Friday. Some are celebrating the verdicts as a victory for freedom and the right to bear arms. Others find it one more example of injustice as human lives are devalued amidst the clamor for ever-expanding gun rights. From my perspective, there is nothing to celebrate here. A then 17-year-old boy brought a semi-automatic weapon to a protest event, ostensibly in support of law officers, using the weapon to kill two men and wound another. His lawyers argued self-defense. I guess I would argue that he should never have been in that position in the first place.
Across this country, it has somehow become acceptable for civilians to brandish such weapons in the public square, as we have seen not only on the streets of cities but also on the grounds of our state capitols. In my own state of Kentucky, citizens are allowed to carry weapons, either openly or concealed, into the state capitol. In an article in the Lexington Herald dated January 10, 2020, it was revealed that teachers gathering at the capitol to address educational and pension issues were not allowed to bring signs “on sticks into the building ‘because they were concerned the sticks could be used as dangerous weapons.’” Sticks in the hands of educators are deemed too dangerous. An automatic weapon in the hands of a 17-year-old boy, however, seems a reasonable accessory in an environment of protest.
This is where the argument often deteriorates into the usual talking points about Second Amendment rights vs. responsible gun control. The positions are so well documented and predictable that we seem to have lost interest in the dialogue. As with many such arguments these days, the extremes dominate these conversations, with common sense and human decency shouted down in the cause of personal rights. With the proliferation of weapons manufactured to bring carnage on a scale that seems to shock us less and less comes continuing opportunities for violence in places where such weapons and such violence were once prohibited. As long as we continue to shout at each other, however, instead of listen … as long as we continue to see truth not as the verification of facts but the malleable tool of personal and political opinion … as long as we allow ourselves to be pitted one against another by voices less interested in respect and the consideration of the greater good … as long as fear is weaponized and allowed to indiscriminately find acceptance on our streets and in places of public governance … as long as we relegate those different than us to an “other” status that devalues human life, we will find ourselves on a self-destructive path as the ideals of freedom and hope birthed in the guiding documents of our nation are cast aside.
It seems that 17-year-old boys are welcome to bring semi-automatic weapons into the arena of differing ideas, discharging those weapons without accountability. Kyle Rittenhouse should never have been in that position. I doubt he will be the last.
Dr James Abernathy is a retired minister, having served churches in Kentucky and Virginia, now living in Lexington.
James Abernathy
Sat, November 20, 2021,
Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges on Friday. Some are celebrating the verdicts as a victory for freedom and the right to bear arms. Others find it one more example of injustice as human lives are devalued amidst the clamor for ever-expanding gun rights. From my perspective, there is nothing to celebrate here. A then 17-year-old boy brought a semi-automatic weapon to a protest event, ostensibly in support of law officers, using the weapon to kill two men and wound another. His lawyers argued self-defense. I guess I would argue that he should never have been in that position in the first place.
Across this country, it has somehow become acceptable for civilians to brandish such weapons in the public square, as we have seen not only on the streets of cities but also on the grounds of our state capitols. In my own state of Kentucky, citizens are allowed to carry weapons, either openly or concealed, into the state capitol. In an article in the Lexington Herald dated January 10, 2020, it was revealed that teachers gathering at the capitol to address educational and pension issues were not allowed to bring signs “on sticks into the building ‘because they were concerned the sticks could be used as dangerous weapons.’” Sticks in the hands of educators are deemed too dangerous. An automatic weapon in the hands of a 17-year-old boy, however, seems a reasonable accessory in an environment of protest.
This is where the argument often deteriorates into the usual talking points about Second Amendment rights vs. responsible gun control. The positions are so well documented and predictable that we seem to have lost interest in the dialogue. As with many such arguments these days, the extremes dominate these conversations, with common sense and human decency shouted down in the cause of personal rights. With the proliferation of weapons manufactured to bring carnage on a scale that seems to shock us less and less comes continuing opportunities for violence in places where such weapons and such violence were once prohibited. As long as we continue to shout at each other, however, instead of listen … as long as we continue to see truth not as the verification of facts but the malleable tool of personal and political opinion … as long as we allow ourselves to be pitted one against another by voices less interested in respect and the consideration of the greater good … as long as fear is weaponized and allowed to indiscriminately find acceptance on our streets and in places of public governance … as long as we relegate those different than us to an “other” status that devalues human life, we will find ourselves on a self-destructive path as the ideals of freedom and hope birthed in the guiding documents of our nation are cast aside.
It seems that 17-year-old boys are welcome to bring semi-automatic weapons into the arena of differing ideas, discharging those weapons without accountability. Kyle Rittenhouse should never have been in that position. I doubt he will be the last.
Dr James Abernathy is a retired minister, having served churches in Kentucky and Virginia, now living in Lexington.
'Chilling' Rittenhouse Verdict 'Emboldens' Vigilantes, Warns Wisconsin Newspaper
Mary Papenfuss
Sun, November 21, 2021
A Wisconsin newspaper on Saturday attacked the verdict to acquit shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, saying the decision is “sure to embolden militant people who seek to take the law into their own hands.”
Rittenhouse is “no hero, as some of his defenders pretend. He behaved like a vigilante and didn’t deserve to walk free, given his recklessness,” the Wisconsin State Journal declared in an editorial. “Yet the law, unfortunately, skews in favor of shooters who claim self-defense. That needs to change.”
Rittenhouse, then 17, traveled from his home in Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year during protests there against the police shooting of local Black resident Jacob Blake.
Rittenhouse “wasn’t making anyone safer by parading through crowds of angry people with a semiautomatic rifle strapped to his chest and, according to prosecutors, pointing it at people before the conflict escalated,” the newspaper noted.
When the night was over, Rittenhouse had fatally shot two unarmed men, and injured a third man who had a firearm.
“Much of the case” against him “hinged on whether Rittenhouse had provoked the others. If carrying an AR-15 down a crowded street isn’t provocative, what is?” the newspaper asked.
What “Rittenhouse and other gun-toting, self-appointed ‘protectors’ of Kenosha needed to hear from our court system is that they are not the judge and jury when things go awry,” the editorial added.
The newspaper also raised an interesting puzzle: If “two people openly carry guns and point them at each other, whose self-defense claim takes priority?”
The state should be focused on “discouraging standoffs with guns, rather than encouraging more people to arm themselves out of fear or revenge,” the editorial concluded.
Read the entire Wisconsin State Journal editorial .
.
Mary Papenfuss
Sun, November 21, 2021
A Wisconsin newspaper on Saturday attacked the verdict to acquit shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, saying the decision is “sure to embolden militant people who seek to take the law into their own hands.”
Rittenhouse is “no hero, as some of his defenders pretend. He behaved like a vigilante and didn’t deserve to walk free, given his recklessness,” the Wisconsin State Journal declared in an editorial. “Yet the law, unfortunately, skews in favor of shooters who claim self-defense. That needs to change.”
Rittenhouse, then 17, traveled from his home in Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year during protests there against the police shooting of local Black resident Jacob Blake.
Rittenhouse “wasn’t making anyone safer by parading through crowds of angry people with a semiautomatic rifle strapped to his chest and, according to prosecutors, pointing it at people before the conflict escalated,” the newspaper noted.
When the night was over, Rittenhouse had fatally shot two unarmed men, and injured a third man who had a firearm.
“Much of the case” against him “hinged on whether Rittenhouse had provoked the others. If carrying an AR-15 down a crowded street isn’t provocative, what is?” the newspaper asked.
What “Rittenhouse and other gun-toting, self-appointed ‘protectors’ of Kenosha needed to hear from our court system is that they are not the judge and jury when things go awry,” the editorial added.
The newspaper also raised an interesting puzzle: If “two people openly carry guns and point them at each other, whose self-defense claim takes priority?”
The state should be focused on “discouraging standoffs with guns, rather than encouraging more people to arm themselves out of fear or revenge,” the editorial concluded.
Read the entire Wisconsin State Journal editorial .
.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s Lethal Pursuit of Happiness is America’s Legacy
Barrett Holmes Pitner
Sat, November 20, 2021,
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Kyle Rittenhouse is a free man today and the explanation for this resides in America’s troubling interpretation of “freedom” that has always relied on division.
Thomas Jefferson’s credo of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” has inspired Americans for centuries, but the philosophy that inspired Jefferson’s words actually deprives people of freedom.
Jefferson’s language derived from the work of British philosopher John Locke, who articulated the trinity of “Life, Liberty, and Property” as the bedrock of civilization and democracy—and while these words may appear innocuous, they result in calamitous outcomes.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s Future Looks Hideously Bright
By attaching life and liberty to property, Locke undermined the importance of life and liberty within public and shared spaces, making them exist within the items and territory that someone owned. In America, ownership was the precursor to freedom.
It should surprise no one that Locke’s words were embraced by colonizers who implemented genocide to take indigenous land, and ethnocide to erect American chattel slavery. Locke’s dystopian interpretation of freedom also resulted in property and ownership becoming an extension of white identity. White people came to the New World for the freedom that property and ownership would allegedly provide, and with the understanding that destruction of property or the denial of ownership would threaten white freedom.
In Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, his chapter “Of Property” that explains the role of property in society is directly preceded by the chapter “Of Slavery” that attempts to justify the institution
Locke’s convoluted and nonsensical attempt at doing that basically consists of saying that it is impossible for a human being to knowingly agree to be a slave. Therefore, if an oppressive relationship appears to be slavery, according to Locke, it is instead an agreement between one person or a group of people to submit and obey another person or group. To Locke, slavery is not slavery but a “compact” between a “lawful conqueror and a captive.”
Jefferson was one of America’s most influential slaveowners and politicians, and his personal freedom and wealth derived from both the land and the hundreds of people he owned. Locke’s words justified his immoral way of life, and unsurprisingly, he instilled Lockean ideals into the fabric of the United States.
Jefferson’s and Locke’s concept of freedom was dependent upon depriving other people of freedom, yet despite Jefferson’s embrace of Locke’s ideals, he understood that the trinity of life, liberty, and property would not inspire the American people. An emphasis on property could alienate the many Americans who did not own property, so replacing it with “the pursuit of happiness” sounded more inclusive and democratic. With this amended language, the Americans without property—those of them who were not considered property—could feel comforted by the promise of being able to pursue property.
Due to America’s Founding Fathers embracing Locke’s absurd ideas, the United States has professed an understanding of freedom that normalizes division and makes all of us less safe. America articulates that property is a requirement for freedom, and that it is acceptable to deprive other people of freedom in order to acquire property.
America’s First Newspapers Were Financed by the Slave Trade
Now it is easy to disregard the present-day impact of ideals forged in the 1600s and 1700s, but the prevalence of Americans justifying the taking of human life to protect property demonstrates that these ideals still impact our society today.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal is just one of many examples; the killing of Ahmaud Arbery is another example since three white men attacked and killed an unarmed Black man because they suspected that he had broken into white-owned property.
Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, travelled across state lines with an illegally obtained AR-15-style rifle that he did not have a license to carry because he said he wanted to protect property and businesses during the riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin that erupted following the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by Kenosha police officers.
These facts are not even up for debate, and the only controversy related to the facts that preceded Rittenhouse’s unwarranted and deadly presence in Kenosha pertain to his friend Dominick Black. Since Rittenhouse was only 17, he was not old enough to buy his gun therefore he gave Black money and had him buy the gun instead. Black now faces felony charges for distributing a gun to a minor.
Since Wisconsin is an “open carry” state that allows minors to carry guns, so long as it is not a short-barreled shotgun or rifle, Rittenhouse was perfectly within his rights to walk around in public with an illegally obtained Smith & Wesson AR-style semi-automatic rifle strapped to his chest.
Also, the increased prevalence of guns and “open carry” states in America derives from the court case Nunn v. State of Georgia in 1846 that effectively turned the slaveholding state of Georgia into an “open carry” state.
Basically, in 1837 Georgia banned certain guns and weapons, but since nearly half of Georgia’s population was made up of enslaved people, white Georgians still needed guns to deny freedom to the humans they considered to be their property.
The illegality of guns in Georgia and the constant need to terrorize enslaved Black Americans created a dangerous black market of guns and a new culture of concealing guns when you carry them. Conceal carry resulted in white Georgians killing a lot of other white Georgians, but since removing guns was not an option for a slaveholding state, the Georgia Supreme Court effectively banned concealed carry and embraced open carry in order to protect white freedom and life.
In the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Heller v. District of Columbia that overturned Washington, D.C.’s weapons ban, former Justice Antonin Scalia referenced Nunn and stated that it protected the “natural right of self-defense.” Following this decision, “open carry” laws have spread across America.
Unsurprisingly, Scalia’s analysis overlooked the enslaved person’s right to self-defense and freedom.
By most accounts, it appears that Rittenhouse did not arrive in Kenosha with the intent to kill anyone, but he was definitely prepared to use lethal force if necessary, in order to protect property. Rittenhouse probably does not even own any property, but his happiness and his dangerous concept of freedom consists of using deadly force in pursuit and protection of property. America’s legal system considers Rittenhouse’s murders in defense of property an act of self-defense.
Since the founding of the United States, this nation has encouraged white Americans—in the name of freedom—to behave the same as Rittenhouse. When Rittenhouse, and the countless other Rittenhouses from the colonial days to the present, kill and terrorize people in defense of property and “freedom” our society has always said their actions are okay.
For centuries, America has called these senseless killings “the pursuit of happiness.”
Barrett Holmes Pitner
Sat, November 20, 2021,
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
Kyle Rittenhouse is a free man today and the explanation for this resides in America’s troubling interpretation of “freedom” that has always relied on division.
Thomas Jefferson’s credo of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” has inspired Americans for centuries, but the philosophy that inspired Jefferson’s words actually deprives people of freedom.
Jefferson’s language derived from the work of British philosopher John Locke, who articulated the trinity of “Life, Liberty, and Property” as the bedrock of civilization and democracy—and while these words may appear innocuous, they result in calamitous outcomes.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s Future Looks Hideously Bright
By attaching life and liberty to property, Locke undermined the importance of life and liberty within public and shared spaces, making them exist within the items and territory that someone owned. In America, ownership was the precursor to freedom.
It should surprise no one that Locke’s words were embraced by colonizers who implemented genocide to take indigenous land, and ethnocide to erect American chattel slavery. Locke’s dystopian interpretation of freedom also resulted in property and ownership becoming an extension of white identity. White people came to the New World for the freedom that property and ownership would allegedly provide, and with the understanding that destruction of property or the denial of ownership would threaten white freedom.
In Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, his chapter “Of Property” that explains the role of property in society is directly preceded by the chapter “Of Slavery” that attempts to justify the institution
Locke’s convoluted and nonsensical attempt at doing that basically consists of saying that it is impossible for a human being to knowingly agree to be a slave. Therefore, if an oppressive relationship appears to be slavery, according to Locke, it is instead an agreement between one person or a group of people to submit and obey another person or group. To Locke, slavery is not slavery but a “compact” between a “lawful conqueror and a captive.”
Jefferson was one of America’s most influential slaveowners and politicians, and his personal freedom and wealth derived from both the land and the hundreds of people he owned. Locke’s words justified his immoral way of life, and unsurprisingly, he instilled Lockean ideals into the fabric of the United States.
Jefferson’s and Locke’s concept of freedom was dependent upon depriving other people of freedom, yet despite Jefferson’s embrace of Locke’s ideals, he understood that the trinity of life, liberty, and property would not inspire the American people. An emphasis on property could alienate the many Americans who did not own property, so replacing it with “the pursuit of happiness” sounded more inclusive and democratic. With this amended language, the Americans without property—those of them who were not considered property—could feel comforted by the promise of being able to pursue property.
Due to America’s Founding Fathers embracing Locke’s absurd ideas, the United States has professed an understanding of freedom that normalizes division and makes all of us less safe. America articulates that property is a requirement for freedom, and that it is acceptable to deprive other people of freedom in order to acquire property.
America’s First Newspapers Were Financed by the Slave Trade
Now it is easy to disregard the present-day impact of ideals forged in the 1600s and 1700s, but the prevalence of Americans justifying the taking of human life to protect property demonstrates that these ideals still impact our society today.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal is just one of many examples; the killing of Ahmaud Arbery is another example since three white men attacked and killed an unarmed Black man because they suspected that he had broken into white-owned property.
Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, travelled across state lines with an illegally obtained AR-15-style rifle that he did not have a license to carry because he said he wanted to protect property and businesses during the riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin that erupted following the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by Kenosha police officers.
These facts are not even up for debate, and the only controversy related to the facts that preceded Rittenhouse’s unwarranted and deadly presence in Kenosha pertain to his friend Dominick Black. Since Rittenhouse was only 17, he was not old enough to buy his gun therefore he gave Black money and had him buy the gun instead. Black now faces felony charges for distributing a gun to a minor.
Since Wisconsin is an “open carry” state that allows minors to carry guns, so long as it is not a short-barreled shotgun or rifle, Rittenhouse was perfectly within his rights to walk around in public with an illegally obtained Smith & Wesson AR-style semi-automatic rifle strapped to his chest.
Also, the increased prevalence of guns and “open carry” states in America derives from the court case Nunn v. State of Georgia in 1846 that effectively turned the slaveholding state of Georgia into an “open carry” state.
Basically, in 1837 Georgia banned certain guns and weapons, but since nearly half of Georgia’s population was made up of enslaved people, white Georgians still needed guns to deny freedom to the humans they considered to be their property.
The illegality of guns in Georgia and the constant need to terrorize enslaved Black Americans created a dangerous black market of guns and a new culture of concealing guns when you carry them. Conceal carry resulted in white Georgians killing a lot of other white Georgians, but since removing guns was not an option for a slaveholding state, the Georgia Supreme Court effectively banned concealed carry and embraced open carry in order to protect white freedom and life.
In the 2008 Supreme Court decision in Heller v. District of Columbia that overturned Washington, D.C.’s weapons ban, former Justice Antonin Scalia referenced Nunn and stated that it protected the “natural right of self-defense.” Following this decision, “open carry” laws have spread across America.
Unsurprisingly, Scalia’s analysis overlooked the enslaved person’s right to self-defense and freedom.
By most accounts, it appears that Rittenhouse did not arrive in Kenosha with the intent to kill anyone, but he was definitely prepared to use lethal force if necessary, in order to protect property. Rittenhouse probably does not even own any property, but his happiness and his dangerous concept of freedom consists of using deadly force in pursuit and protection of property. America’s legal system considers Rittenhouse’s murders in defense of property an act of self-defense.
Since the founding of the United States, this nation has encouraged white Americans—in the name of freedom—to behave the same as Rittenhouse. When Rittenhouse, and the countless other Rittenhouses from the colonial days to the present, kill and terrorize people in defense of property and “freedom” our society has always said their actions are okay.
For centuries, America has called these senseless killings “the pursuit of happiness.”
David Cook: Opinion: Who gets to carry guns in America? And who doesn't?
David Cook, Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.
Sat, November 20, 2021,
Nov. 20—He was 17. A child, essentially.
Kyle Rittenhouse couldn't vote.
Couldn't legally buy cigarettes.
Was barely old enough to buy a ticket for an R-rated movie.
Yet last year, as a 17-year-old, he and others around him thought it appropriate for him to carry an AR-15-style rifle into public protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. That day, young Kyle Rittenhouse killed two people.
I have only begun to process his not-guilty verdict, announced Friday afternoon.
There is so much suffering, so many reasons to mourn.
Rittenhouse may be legally innocent, but blood will remain on his hands, his heart, possibly for the rest of his life. The people I know who have killed others say such actions — firing a gun at another human being, watching the body drop, the blood spill from wrecked flesh, the breath stop — will distort and haunt for time immeasurable.
Self-defense, his lawyers claimed.
Would such a claim apply for every American?
Consider local history. Ed Johnson facing a white lynch mob, the Cherokees facing forced removal, five Black women shotgunned by the Klan in 1980 — if they had armed themselves and shot their white attackers in self-defense, would the courts have set them free?
It is hard for me to imagine a present-day Black teenager carrying an AR-15 to our city's next protest, shooting three white people, claiming self-defense and receiving the same treatment and verdict as Rittenhouse.
The criminal justice system seems more schizophrenic than blind; it has ruthlessly eaten up the lives of so many, while bending over backwards to allow and sustain others' freedom.
I think of Tony Oliver.
Oliver is a Black Chattanooga businessman; during COVID-19, he helped deliver some 20,000 meals to our city's homeless and poor.
He owns TNT Cleaning. Mentors both youth and adults. A husband, father, believer.
"I want to keep growing my business so I can help others in my community," he says.
Growing up, he made bad decisions. He robbed, fell into addiction, eventually serving some 17 years in prison.
In 2007, he became sober. Started working full-time. Fell in love.
Released from prison on probation, Oliver transformed his entire life.
In 2017, he was working the late-shift at a local manufacturing plant. His wife, home alone at night. Their home had been twice burglarized, so she bought a handgun.
Kept it in her bedside table.
For self-defense.
With weeks remaining on his probation, authorities visited their home. Found the gun — properly secured, on his wife's side of the bed.
For self-defense.
But Oliver was a felon on probation; he is prevented from possessing a firearm.
With his daughter watching, Oliver was cuffed and sent back to prison.
Why?
His wife owned a gun.
For self-defense.
(A judge later dismissed the charges, yet Oliver says his parole officer still forced him back to prison to finish his probation; he lost his job in the process.)
This fall, I read Carol Anderson's "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America."
"This book should be required reading for every elected state representative and senator as well as those in Congress," emailed the reader who recommended this to me. "Ms. Anderson's book delves into the real reasons framers of the Constitution included the Amendment — mainly the threat from armed slaves and free Blacks."
"The eighteenth-century origins of the 'right to bear arms' explicitly excluded Black people," writes Anderson, a decorated, best-selling professor at Emory University. Elsewhere, she writes: "The Second Amendment ... was designed and has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable."
Can you think of any time in American history when Black people collectively armed themselves against white violence ... and received full support of the Constitution, police officers, judges and politicians for doing so?
Philando Castille. Alton Sterling. Tamir Rice. John Crawford. All Black. Each carrying or possessing a gun. (Rice, 12, was playing with a toy gun. Crawford was carrying a BB gun he'd picked up off the Walmart shelf.)
They were all shot and killed by police.
Who gets to carry guns in this country?
And who doesn't?
I don't write this out of reckless emotion, wanting to make a painful situation worse. I, too, own multiple guns. But if my Black brothers and sisters can't carry their guns in the same way I can — or Rittenhouse — then what role does the Second Amendment play in this country?
David Cook writes a Sunday column and can be reached at dcook@timesfreepress.com.
David Cook, Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.
Sat, November 20, 2021,
Nov. 20—He was 17. A child, essentially.
Kyle Rittenhouse couldn't vote.
Couldn't legally buy cigarettes.
Was barely old enough to buy a ticket for an R-rated movie.
Yet last year, as a 17-year-old, he and others around him thought it appropriate for him to carry an AR-15-style rifle into public protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin. That day, young Kyle Rittenhouse killed two people.
I have only begun to process his not-guilty verdict, announced Friday afternoon.
There is so much suffering, so many reasons to mourn.
Rittenhouse may be legally innocent, but blood will remain on his hands, his heart, possibly for the rest of his life. The people I know who have killed others say such actions — firing a gun at another human being, watching the body drop, the blood spill from wrecked flesh, the breath stop — will distort and haunt for time immeasurable.
Self-defense, his lawyers claimed.
Would such a claim apply for every American?
Consider local history. Ed Johnson facing a white lynch mob, the Cherokees facing forced removal, five Black women shotgunned by the Klan in 1980 — if they had armed themselves and shot their white attackers in self-defense, would the courts have set them free?
It is hard for me to imagine a present-day Black teenager carrying an AR-15 to our city's next protest, shooting three white people, claiming self-defense and receiving the same treatment and verdict as Rittenhouse.
The criminal justice system seems more schizophrenic than blind; it has ruthlessly eaten up the lives of so many, while bending over backwards to allow and sustain others' freedom.
I think of Tony Oliver.
Oliver is a Black Chattanooga businessman; during COVID-19, he helped deliver some 20,000 meals to our city's homeless and poor.
He owns TNT Cleaning. Mentors both youth and adults. A husband, father, believer.
"I want to keep growing my business so I can help others in my community," he says.
Growing up, he made bad decisions. He robbed, fell into addiction, eventually serving some 17 years in prison.
In 2007, he became sober. Started working full-time. Fell in love.
Released from prison on probation, Oliver transformed his entire life.
In 2017, he was working the late-shift at a local manufacturing plant. His wife, home alone at night. Their home had been twice burglarized, so she bought a handgun.
Kept it in her bedside table.
For self-defense.
With weeks remaining on his probation, authorities visited their home. Found the gun — properly secured, on his wife's side of the bed.
For self-defense.
But Oliver was a felon on probation; he is prevented from possessing a firearm.
With his daughter watching, Oliver was cuffed and sent back to prison.
Why?
His wife owned a gun.
For self-defense.
(A judge later dismissed the charges, yet Oliver says his parole officer still forced him back to prison to finish his probation; he lost his job in the process.)
This fall, I read Carol Anderson's "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America."
"This book should be required reading for every elected state representative and senator as well as those in Congress," emailed the reader who recommended this to me. "Ms. Anderson's book delves into the real reasons framers of the Constitution included the Amendment — mainly the threat from armed slaves and free Blacks."
"The eighteenth-century origins of the 'right to bear arms' explicitly excluded Black people," writes Anderson, a decorated, best-selling professor at Emory University. Elsewhere, she writes: "The Second Amendment ... was designed and has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable."
Can you think of any time in American history when Black people collectively armed themselves against white violence ... and received full support of the Constitution, police officers, judges and politicians for doing so?
Philando Castille. Alton Sterling. Tamir Rice. John Crawford. All Black. Each carrying or possessing a gun. (Rice, 12, was playing with a toy gun. Crawford was carrying a BB gun he'd picked up off the Walmart shelf.)
They were all shot and killed by police.
Who gets to carry guns in this country?
And who doesn't?
I don't write this out of reckless emotion, wanting to make a painful situation worse. I, too, own multiple guns. But if my Black brothers and sisters can't carry their guns in the same way I can — or Rittenhouse — then what role does the Second Amendment play in this country?
David Cook writes a Sunday column and can be reached at dcook@timesfreepress.com.
