Alec Baldwin and Kyle Rittenhouse — how much difference?

Post Reply New Topic

Both people pointed a gun at one or more people and shot them dead. Neither will face punishment via the criminal justice system, although both will most assuredly be sued.

Is there any real difference?

PS I decided to add a poll after writing the above although that had not been my initial intent.

Evidence, please?

Kyle Rittenhouse deliberately murdered his victims.  He deliberately brought a loaded gun and used it.

Alec Baldwin accidentally murdered his victims.  He was told that the gun he picked up had no live rounds.

Both face civil suits.  Only Rittenhouse is charged with a criminal offense.

In my opinion Baldwin should never have picked up the gun, pointed it at somebody, and pulled the trigger. I don't consider him a murderer but believe what he did meets the usual criteria for a manslaughter charge.

Rittenhouse has been brought to trial under circumstances that seem deliberately engineered to result in him walking. I won't go into further detail as to why it looks this way to me.

Feel free to disagree with anything I said.

The following answers are about literally “deserving” punishment not about being legally guilty of a crime.

Rittenhouse deserves punishment of some sort. He should have not been there. He was there on purpose and because of that two people are dead and one person is living with the after effects of being shot. As much as it looks like at the moment legally it is not going to happen he deserves punishment.

As far as Baldwin I do not have enough information. Was he ever told you are not supposed point a loaded gun, if so when and how often?. If this was a pure accident due to stupidly and lack of common sense having to live this the rest of his life is more than enough. If this was a result of his cost cutting as has been suggested, it is a different story.

@ASPartOfMe I completely agree with what you say about Rittenhouse, although I could elaborate and add some additional observations but I won't.

As for Baldwin, I think he was wrong to assume the gun wasn't loaded. In my mind he committed manslaughter.

I don't understand this line of reasoning, for if he shouldn't have been there, the rioters he shot really shouldn't have been there, and I don't think his being a few months shy of 18 has as much bearing as many seem to give it. Are people just supposed to sit there and let their town be trashed because other people are mad about something?

The question is not about the rioters ahem “mostly peaceful protesters”. Kenosha is not Rittenhouse’s town. At the time of riot he lived 20 miles away from Kenosha.

Please ELI5.

What sequence of events led to Rittenhouse's mother driving him to that demonstration? Why was his presence there (with a loaded semi-automatic) necessary for the good of mankind? How much worse off would we be today had he just stayed home that night?

He lived nearby and worked there, and I believe his friends lived there, so it doesn't seem far fetched that he might consider it his community. I just think if you want to use the "he shouldn't have been there" argument, you have to apply it evenly, as it's not like the people he shot were there to see the sights.

Well, we'd have one more pedophile, one more domestic abuser, and a petty crook would still have full use of his right arm.

You have to be class 1 stupid to think these two situations were the same. No I didn't read the comments in this thread.

According to your logic, two wrongs make a right.

Substitute "gun" with "car".

you're motorist A.

You pick up your car from the mechanic, who has assured you that the brakes are fixed.
And as you drive home you apply the brakes like normal as you round a corner, and the brakes fail, and your car leaves the road and accidently runs over a pedestrian on the sidewalk.


you're motorist B.

You drive to the part of town where you hear that a riot is going on. You see folks whom you suspect are looters, so you declare yourself to be police/judge/jury/executioner, and convict them in your mind, and then you...steer your car off of the street and onto the sidewalks to chase some of these non motorists whom you suspect are looters...chase them with your car...and you succeed in deliberately running over two or three of them.

How are the two situations the same?

Even if you believe that motorist B was committing "justifiable vehicular homicide" you have to admit that the two situations are quite different.

So, we can add logic to the list of things that you don't understand? Let's throw basic reading comprehension in there too for good measure.

This is getting tiresome, I'm starting to think you're some kind of masochist or something.

How do you people get these ideas that are so completely divorced from reality? The thread in News has multiple complete videos of the incident, this isn't a my opinion vs your opinion difference, you can actually see what happened.

Only my liver over the weekend (which just started for me)