Make The Streets Safe For Gun Owners, Ban Skateboards
As someone who doesn’t own a gun and has never fired one, I can relate to Kyle Rittenhouse’s reactions. Of course Kyle Rittenhouse felt his life was in danger, there was a guy with a gun there. A gun!
Anyone who doesn’t own a gun knows how scary it is to be in a gathering only to discover someone’s carrying a gun, especially in an emotionally-charged situation. No non-gun owner has ever been in a tense situation surrounded by strangers where emotions are running high and thought “Oh, good, there’s a guy with a gun, that will make things better.” Two people with guns is even worse. That’s why we non-gun owners tend not to own guns in the first place, because we don’t want to make things worse.
All non-gun owners feel threatened by the presence of an armed stranger. It’s only natural. Gun owners feel threatened by strangers with guns, too, that’s why they carry guns. They’re frightened by strangers with guns, and yet they somehow aren’t self-aware enough to realize that to many others, they ARE that stranger with a gun. When they look in the mirror and see the bandolier and the appliance created to dispense death, they envision a white hat and white horse others do not see.
To diminish the amount of fear — and thus gunfire — gun owners feel, there are certain cues gun owners send to each other to let them know they are on the same side. I’m not talking about skin color or white power hand signals, I’m not learned enough in gun culture to know if that’s where their hearts lie. No, someone who is well-versed in guns will have been trained to follow protocols that lessen the chance of accidental shootings, like not pointing your gun at someone and things like that. I’m sure there is a lengthy and byzantine rule book of procedures gun fetishists follow to signify they aren’t about to kill you, but non-gun owners only have one: don’t bring a gun out with you in public. Break that one rule and no non-gun owner is going to give you their trust. Believe me, you are going to appear threatening and unlikable to them.
On the other hand, very few non-skateboard owners feel threatened when they see someone with a skateboard in public. Nobody looks at someone doing a natty 360 (I made that up) and thinks: “Oh man, I gotta run for cover.” Gun fetishists, on the other hand, see a skateboard in someone’s hands and automatically run through the checklist of when it’s okay to shoot someone dead and wonder if this qualifies.
Oh, I know, the guy with the skateboard actually hit Kyle Rittenhouse with it. There is, however, a story behind that. I guarantee Anthony Huber did not head out to the protests that evening with the idea of bringing the skateboard as a weapon with which to kill someone. Anthony Huber heard people screaming “stop that guy, he just shot someone.” Given the circumstances, Huber’s reactions were not merely understandable but outright heroic. If Rittenhouse was afraid for his life, just consider how Huber must have felt. I’m sure he did not do what he did lightly. If he put himself in a life-or-death situation, it surely wasn’t because he felt he had the upper hand.
Kyle Rittenhouse made his first kill that night because he feared for his life. And indeed, he was not the only person with a gun in that situation. But no one died that night except for those who died at Rittenhouse’s own hand, which suggests either that his life was not as endangered as he believed or else his life was in danger because others were triggered (no pun intended) by Rittenhouse’s threatening behavior. And I’d like to remind you that to a non-gun owner, carrying a gun around is viewed as threatening behavior.
The second and third people he shot were people responding to the fact that he had just shot someone. If you can believe that, to non-gun owners, a person carrying a gun is viewed as threatening, just imagine how scary a person carrying a gun is perceived after hearing gunshots and then people screaming that someone has just been shot.
I view it as an incredibly brave act to go after someone carrying an assault rifle when your only weapon is a skateboard. Was it the right action? Obviously it was not the safe thing to do, but I’d like to think I might have done something similar in the same situation.
I haven’t delved into the details of this case, but apparently Anthony Huber had a criminal history. Let’s say he was a hardened criminal with little regard for life. That’s most likely not true but let’s go with it. Even if he had led a life of debauchery, it appears he redeemed himself in the end. That is not to say he made the right choice or even that the facts were on his side, but it is pretty hard to deny that he acted bravely and selflessly in his last moments. No one is a saint, we all have our sins, but I have always believed in redemption and I judge each action on its own rather than trying to seeing people as completely good or completely bad.
I’ll leave you with one last point to ponder. What if Kyle Rittenhouse, armed with his weapon that he didn’t bring to goofy foot with on the half-pipe (I didn’t make that up), had been walking down the street and heard “Stop that guy, he just beat someone to death with his skateboard!” Accepting his own explanations for why he was there, to protect property and maintain order, do you think he might have tried to stop the guy who was walking down the street with a skateboard?”
I’m pretty sure if the situation had been reversed, it still would have been Anthony Huber who would’ve ended up being killed.