Kyle Rittenhouse abruptly departed the stage during an appearance at the University of Memphis on Wednesday, after he was confronted about comments made by Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk.
Rittenhouse was invited by the college’s Turning Point USA chapter to speak at the campus. However, the event was met with backlash from a number of students who objected to Rittenhouse’s presence.
The 21-year-old gained notoriety in August 2020 when, at the age of 17, he shot and killed two men—Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as injuring 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz—at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He said the three shootings, carried out with a semi-automatic AR-15-style firearm, were in self-defense. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest where the shootings took place was held after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was left paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot by a white police officer.
I am arguing that only an idiot points a gun at someone they don’t intend to kill.
In the same vein I am arguing that only an idiot brings a gun somewhere to “protect property” if they don’t intend to use it. (Whether they “want to” or not is irrelevant, if whatever situation they consider appropriate arises, they intend to shoot somebody.)
For someone to bring their gun somewhere they have no good reason being in order to “protect property” they need to be ready and willing to use it or they are too fucking stupid to be allowed to have a gun.
Which goes back to my original point: “you can take lives to protect property. You can not damage property to protect lives.”
The property of complete strangers was more important to Rittenhouse than the lives of the complete strangers he would be shooting in order to “protect” it.