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.

  • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    Ehh, except you’re wrong. Using terms colloquially is one thing, no one has accepted that the legal definition of murder has changed. Certainly not regarding Rittenhouse.

    Yes he is known for being a killer or a shooter but he is not a murderer until charged in a court of law. Make whatever argument for how the decision not to charge him was wrong, I won’t disagree. He is a killer. The distinction is important because the “law” deemed it rightful.

    Again, make whatever argument you want for that being wrong.

      • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        18 U.S.C. § 1111 defines murder as the unlawful killing of a human being with malice

        the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.

        This is both the legal definition of murder and the dictionary definition.

        Next you’ll say “But lAnGuAgEs ChAnGe OvEr TiMe”

        Edit: I’d like to point out the failure to recognize that my meaning is the law failed. Should he be a murderer? Yes. Is he? No. Why is that? The justice system failed.

        You can apply whatever meaning to whatever words you want, none of that matters in the face of the far reaching power that is the U.S. justice system. You declaring he’s a murderer is the most meaningless form of activism I can think of. You’re an ant screaming at a bulldozer.

    • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      “killing black people isn’t murder like killing rats with pesticide isn’t murder” -the least racist conservative