Why you need an AR-15

I'm lying. You don't.

Testimony in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial — what I’ve seen so far, anyway — appears to be dancing around why a 17-year old kid whose mother drove him to Kenosha, Wis., to "render aid" comes to that town with a high-powered weapon. Some of the defendant’s testimony swings between describing his desire to administer medical aid (without sufficient training) to carrying a rifle he didn’t think he’d need, but would carry any way.

Just like Rittenhouse, I am not a trained medical professional, either, but I’m pretty sure an AR-15 is not standard issue for EMTs or paramedics. Nor is it for movie-goers or concert-goers.

The blood-gargling NRA calls the AR-15 “America’s rifle,” and it certainly shows up in multiple American mass shootings. (For more recent data on that, go here.)

If you’re keeping up with the trial, which will continue at 9 a.m. Monday, there’s much discussion about legal procedure, but what appears to have been lost so far is that the defendant was driven to Kenosha, Wis., by his mother, carrying a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 bought for him by Dominick Black, a friend, who has been charged with providing the gun to an underage person. Rittenhouse, who faces multiple charges for shooting three people last August, was 17 at the time. Two of those people died.

As always, imagine, if you will, a Black 17-year old doing precisely what Rittenhouse is accused of doing.

Here’s more on the rife, from NPR. Watching the prosecution has been alternately painful and infuriating, but let’s hope the jury (and the angry judge) don’t lose sight of that damn semi-automatic.