Get Strapped or Get Stripped

I'm not going to go deep into the weeds on the Rittenhouse verdict. It was prima facie from the moment the trial opened. Between the trial judge's Trumpkin antics to the jury selection, the odds were tilted towards getting the little bastard off.

But when the result of this decision produces crap like this:

Let me phrase it this way. Do you believe liberals need to bring guns to their protests?

Carrying a firearm is a personal decision, and more people on both sides need better education about what it means to carry a firearm in the public sphere so that they can make those decisions for themselves. I’m not trying to get around that question. That is a big, complicated question. And my answer to that is everyone needs more training.

 ...my country has a serious goddamn gun problem. And politics problem.

Yeah, it's Slate. I get that. And I have no idea who "Lara Smith" is other than she's a gormless nitwit.

But one of the most misunderstood Bob Heinlein quotes is that damn "An armed society is a polite society" one from Beyond This Horizon. The context - that the speaker is essentially advocating a sort of eugenics through firearms "kill(ing) off the weak and the stupid" - is never mentioned any more than the "well-regulated militia" part of the Second Amendment is cited alongside the keep-and-bear-arms part.

Because an armed society isn't "polite". It's barely a society at all. When you have to back your political ideas with armed force, every debate will inevitably degenerate into a gunfight. Smith basically admits that; ""everyone needs more training"? Seriously? That's your recommendation when your political opponents come at you armed? Spartakists versus Freikorps in the streets of Portland?

The Rittenhouse verdict sends a clear message to the political opponents of the Three Percenters, Proud Boys, and Oath Keepers - you have two choices; arm yourselves or be at the mercy of being shot down whenever the armed wingnuts show up.

I know what my choice would be.

I also know that if I brought the bullet launcher to a protest that the Portland coppers would be all over me and not to pal around comparing cool rifles. 

As the Homestead strikers or the Stonewall rioters or the Freedom Riders could tell you; the police are the natural allies of the Right. If you're out there raising hell against the Authority the cops are your natural enemies, anyway, and when the Rittenhouses turn up armed and looking for trouble they will get a tongue-bath from the Blue that you, the dirty antifa BLM radical commie hippie bastard, will never receive.

Just like the murderous little bugger did in Kenosha.

Regardless of the circumstances of the individual case, the Rittenhouse verdict presents the American Left with a stark choice.

Arm yourselves, or be destroyed whenever your Proud Boy enemies choose.

And that, my friends, is not a sane way to run a nation.