Dear Editor,

This letter is in response to the Opinion piece by the columnist Jack Bernard in the December 1, 2021 edition of the Henry County Times. I have to disagree strongly with the comments he made about the Kyle Rittenhouse case.

First, he said Rittenhouse was an armed vigilante. That was not true. Webster’s Dictionary defines a vigilante as “a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate). Mr. Rittenhouse was not there to “suppress and punish crime.” He was there to protect a car lot owned by a friend of a friend. In America, people have a right to protect private property from being destroyed by criminals. Additionally, if the local authorities had been doing their jobs, Mr. Rittenhouse and his friends would not have been there in the first place.

Secondly, Mr. Bernard stated that the people Mr. Rittenhouse shot were unarmed. In 2019, FBI data shows that 600 people were beaten to death with hands, fists and feet and 364 were killed with rifles. These men posed a deadly threat to Mr. Rittenhouse, armed or not. The first person he shot, Joseph Rosenbaum, came into contact with Kyle several times before the shooting, telling him and his friends that he would kill them when he got the chance, and calling them the N-word. Later on, Mr. Rosenbaum surprised Kyle by jumping out from behind some parked cars, and started chasing him. Mr. Rosenbaum threw a plastic bag at Kyle that contained several personal items, just missing his head. This undoubtedly alerted Kyle to the fact that Mr. Rosenbaum was trying to hurt him. When Mr. Rosenbaum eventually trapped Kyle between some parked cars he lunged for the barrel of his rifle This is when Kyle fatally shot him. By law, if someone is attempting to take a gun away from you, you can reasonably expect they mean you serious bodily harm and you can use deadly force, if necessary, to protect yourself.

The second person Mr. Rittenhouse shot and killed was Anthony Huber. After shooting Rosenbaum, Kyle began running towards the police to surrender himself. (The police were allowing the “protesters” to loot and burn businesses as they chose). Mr. Huber came up behind Kyle and tried to hit him with a heavy skateboard. Luckily Kyle saw the board coming and turned slightly, receiving a glancing blow. If he had been hit squarely in the head or neck it could have easily killed him.

Kyle, not wanting to be beaten to death, swung his rifle around and fatally shot Mr. Huber.

The last person Mr. Rittenhouse shot was Gaige Grosskreutz. Mr. Bernard did not mention this person in his piece, I guess because Grosskreutz was pointing a pistol right at Kyle’s head. I assume this shooting was justified, even to Mr. Bernard. Kyle saw the pistol in Gaige’s hand, but did not shoot him until it was pointed at his head.

Mr. Bernard is obviously educated and intelligent, so it’s puzzling to me why he does not grasp the idea that a human being has a God-given right to protect himself from serious harm or death. Perhaps he has let his politics cloud his judgement and his ability to see clearly what occurred in Kenosha.

D. Shope,
Locust Grove