Don’t take your guns to town, son

Your opinion of Kyle Rittenhouse is probably wrong, judging by the commentary on television, in print, and on social media.

The 17-year-old charged with two homicides in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was not a hero vigilante, nor was he a predatory white supremacist. He was, the evidence suggests, a foolish boy whose foolish decisions have taken two lives and ruined his own.

If you go armed with a rifle to police a violent protest, you are behaving recklessly. The bad consequences stemming from that decision are at least partly your fault.

In life, there are horrible situations in which there are no good decisions or where it is extremely easy to make the wrong decision. So when we can avoid these horrible situations, we ought to.

Josh Barro put it well:

This is the lesson of the Rittenhouse disaster. It’s a lesson we might ignore because it doesn’t tell a simple story with a simple political lesson.

Because Rittenhouse is a white, male Trump supporter, liberals in the media want this to be a simple story of a bad guy who went hunting down political opponents.

…

This is not true. First, there’s no evidence he’s a white supremacist. Other armed men who were there in the name of protecting Kenosha businesses were white supremacists, but Rittenhouse notably wasn’t part of that group.

Second, the evidence suggests he wasn’t there to hunt down protesters. At one point, he offers first aid to a wounded protester.

Thirdly, when Rittenhouse shot the men he shot, they were chasing him and attacking him, while others were firing handguns nearby. That is, every time Rittenhouse pulled the trigger, it was plausibly in self-defense.

Video evidence captures the two incidents in which Rittenhouse shot someone. In the first incident, Rittenhouse was being chased by Joseph Rosenbaum, an angry protester who earlier had been taunting other armed men, at one point shouting “shoot me n—–!” repeatedly at an apparently armed black man.

While being chased by Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse apparently heard a gunshot behind him and turned to the sound of the gunshot to face Rosenbaum, who was lunging at him. Then, Rittenhouse shot and killed Rosenbaum.

At that point, Rittenhouse tried to flee the scene, and he was pursued again. After he tripped and fell, three men, at least one of them armed with a gun, mobbed him, presumably trying to apprehend him for the first shooting. Others on the scene were armed and were firing at the same time. This was when Rittenhouse shot and killed Anthony Huber, who was attacking Rittenhouse with a skateboard.

Rittenhouse escaped again and attempted to surrender to the police.

We could hash out a million questions here: Why didn’t the police arrest him on the spot? Was it necessary in each case for Rittenhouse to shoot? In the second incident, could he have safely surrendered to his pursuers? Were the men who pursued Rittenhouse the second time doing the right thing in trying to catch a killer? What happened before Rosenbaum, the angry and aggressive protester shouting racial slurs, chased down Rittenhouse? Was there another shooting incident, or was it just a case of an angry protester trying to assault Rittenhouse?

Was Rittenhouse really “spoiling for a fight” to use Joe Biden’s phrase, or was it Rosenbaum?

But all of these questions are subordinate to the initial question: Why the hell was an armed 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse on the streets of Kenosha that night?

Those making Rittenhouse out to be a hero are asserting that he was right to be there and that we need more people like him showing up heavily armed to defend the property of others.

No decent person would say it’s good that Rosenbaum and Huber are dead. Huber, at least, seems to have been motivated by justice, trying to disarm and detain a killer. Rittenhouse, again, was plausibly acting from self-defense in the moment, twice.

So the truly grievous mistake was getting into the situation in which he felt he had to shoot in order to defend himself.

It’s not shocking that such a situation might arise on a night like that. These weren’t peaceful protests despite what CNN claimed. They were violent, destructive riots. Some people were there for the sport of burning and vandalizing. But at every violent protest, there are people there ready to fight and brawl.

At Lafayette Square, I saw an ornery man with a shirt that read, “Violence is the last resort (but I’m great at it),” and saw a small group of high school-aged boys clearly looking for a fight.

Probably, nobody will mess with you if you’re armed. But given the anger, the darkness, the crowds, the masks, the fire, and plenty of other guns, the odds are way too high that somebody will mess with you. At that point, especially when there are other guns nearby and you don’t know who’s aligned with whom, you fear for what your violent attacker would do if he got your gun.

So being armed at a violent riot has put you in a situation where you may die if you don’t shoot.

This isn’t a new story. In my family, we have a word for it: a “Plaxident.” It’s in honor of former Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress, who in 2008 shot himself in the leg. Burress was walking up a narrow, dark stairwell with a drink in his hand when he tripped and fell. His gun came sliding out of his belt, and he tried to grab it. Then, bam.

Yes, anyone could slip on a stairwell. Trying to grab the falling gun might or might not have been rational. But showing up at a night club with a gun in your belt was the real error. So the accidental discharge wasn’t an accident: It was a Plaxident. If your kid breaks a window explaining that his grip slipped on the fastball he was throwing, the relevant question isn’t how his grip slipped but why he was throwing a baseball inside.

Rittenhouse’s error had far graver consequences.

Catholic teaching includes a concept called the “near occasion of sin.” Sometimes, the biggest mistake we make is putting ourselves in a terrible position. And in Catholic teaching, that prudential mistake is a moral error — a sin.

Johnny Cash wrote a song 62 years ago called “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.” It’s about a young cowboy named Billy Joe who grew restless on the farm.

A good boy filled with wanderlust
Who really meant no harm
He changed his clothes and shined his boots
And combed his dark hair down
And his mother cried as he walked out
“Don’t take your guns to town, son
“Leave your guns at home, Bill. Don’t take your guns to town.”

Billy Joe goes to town with no intention to shoot. He isn’t hunting down bad guys. He isn’t looking for trouble. But he ends up in trouble and reaches for his gun.

In the end, Billy Joe ends up dead.

My son hates the song because the lesson is such a downer. I suspect my son would like it more if Billy Joe drew faster and shot his foe. But that result would be just as tragic, as the story of Kyle Rittenhouse shows.

There are certain roads for which, once you choose them, there can be no happy ending.