The once-funny Stephen Colbert “joked” on his late-night comedy political program this week that, after the Kyle Rittenhouse case, there should be a change in the law. He’s right: the law should change, but not in the way he had in mind. Self-defense law expert Andrew Branca has proposed “Kyle’s Law” as a way to prevent political show trials of people who, evidence shows, were lawfully defending their own lives. The road to getting there will be a rough one, but it shouldn’t be.
Colbert claimed on his program that if what Rittenhouse did was legal, there should be a law to prevent people from doing it. Predictably, his adoring audience responded to the applause sign like the trained seals they are, but real life isn’t in a studio. It’s on a street, running away from people who want to kill you, like Trayvon Martin, “Big Mike,” and the four men bent on harming or killing Rittenhouse.
What Colbert didn’t know, or didn’t want his audience to know, was that Kyle Rittenhouse had a right not to be beaten, bloodied, or killed on Aug. 25, 2020. Rittenhouse used self-defense laws that have been imbued in the human species since time immemorial. The right to not be murdered — the right to life — is inherent in natural law, assumed, and breathed into the founding documents of our country and all laws that flow from them. Indeed, it was declared so in the Declaration of Independence, the soul of the country.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Stephen Colbert doesn’t want people to exercise self-defense because it might involve killing the person who is trying to kill you. Killing is bad, but only in service of protecting oneself from the Left’s mobs. If Colbert is so concerned about killings, he should encourage rioters and other bad actors from beating, blinding, fire-bombing, and assassinating innocent people (looking at you, Portland). His jokes, or whatever it is that he does, would be better spent conveying that message instead of condemning Kyle Rittenhouse.
And it’s especially rich coming from a person who doesn’t have to worry about defending himself because he has men and women with guns protecting him. You don’t think CBS goes without armed guards, do you?
And, of course, Colbert, Joy Reid, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Rachel Maddow, and those know-nothing-Keith Olbermann-wannabes on ESPN have guards, too. But they spin yarns on their television programs about the Rittenhouse case. He shouldn’t have been there, they opine. He brought a scary gun, they lecture. It’s as if they think the kid deserved the beating or lynching by the rioters. He was wearing a short skirt, walked into a bar, and deserved it.
Indeed, it makes you wonder if these people would only be happy if Kyle Rittenhouse had been captured by Joseph Rosenbaum and had done to him whatever it is that child rapists do, been beaten to an even bloodier pulp with Anthony Huber’s skateboard, kicked in the head even more by “jump kick man,” pelted with more concrete blocks, had more haymakers landed on his head by his pursuers, actually been shot by Gaige Grosskreutz’s Glock and left for dead, with brain ooze spilling out the side of head, and then shot with his own gun by Left’s shock troops of Antifa and BLM mobs.
Now that’s a death they can get behind. It would be the subject of the Left’s creative class’ next graphic novel or a snuff film.
These people have been mis-dis-and-mal-informing the public about the Rittenhouse case. It was a cause célèbre and therefore the perfect subject for political persecution by a dirty prosecutor. And that’s exactly what happened here.
If they couldn’t get their kill in the streets, they’ll take the shot in court.
As we’ve seen in the George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse cases, there has always been overwhelming evidence that the shootings involved occurred in self-defense. But Branca, writing over at his Law of Self Defense website says that the legal process has been weaponized and that it’s unethical, but there’s no downside for prosecutors. They still earn their political stripes for at least smearing the unpopular defendant even if a jury finds him not guilty.
The consequences for the clearly innocent defender, however, are catastrophic no matter how strong his case of self-defense. For the lawful defender who finds himself the target of a rogue, politically motivated prosecutor, it’s a lose-lose.
Sure, the defender with the evidence and law on his side will probably win an acquittal–but at what cost? Especially with the mainstream media having demonized the defender for a year or more prior to the trial–as a murderer, a racist, a white supremacist.
Branca proposes Kyle’s Law to force the state and prosecutor to personally be on the line if the case brought is what Branca calls “laughably weak.” He also wants to make probable cause hearings meaningful again by requiring the state to demonstrate it has enough evidence to bring the case to trial. He wants to make it possible to sue the cop who made up stuff on charging documents, forever besmirching the name of the defendant, as well.
Too often I see a charging document sworn out by law enforcement officers and containing claims for which there is purportedly probable cause on which to base an arrest and prosecution, but which later turn out to be utterly non-existent (e.g., the charging document claim that George Zimmerman “racially profiled” Trayvon Martin, the basis for the second-degree malice murder charge against Zimmerman–in fact, no evidence of “racial profiling was ever offered at trial). Officers who swear out nonsense to facilitate a wrongful prosecution ought to be held accountable, but never are. Let’s change that. Mere threat of perjury charge is not enough, because the prosecutor who induced the false claim is not then going to charge perjury over that very claim. What’s needed is a private cause of action the wrongfully accused themselves can pursue against lying officer. (Added 11/21/21.)
Kyle Rittenhouse did nothing wrong. He has a right to live. And the people who wanted to take away his God-given right to live that horrible night did not have the right to take it.
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