ARMED SELF-DEFENSE UNDER ATTACK IN THE U.S.

Is armed self-defense a basic human right? The question may seem rhetorical, even nonsensical to a rational mind. “Of course armed self-defense is a basic human right,” you would say. Or is it?In the countries of the EU, it isn’t; nor is armed self-defense acknowledged and accepted as a fundamental human right in the countries that comprise the British Commonwealth.Forget about those Countries of the British Commonwealth and the EU. They are lost.But, what about the United States? Do Americans have a right to armed self-defense?The natural law right codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights makes plain that Americans do have a natural law right of armed self-defense. And the seminal Second Amendment holdings in Heller, McDonald, and, most recently, in Bruen explicitly assert that. So, why does that remain a question for us? But a question for us it is, disturbing as it is.The Neoliberal Globalist elite puppet-masters and the Neo-Marxist internationalists do not acknowledge—in fact do not recognize—the right.Of course, it should not matter what these creatures think. But so long as Americans vote their proxies into public office, the right of armed self-defense remains, in practice an open question in many jurisdictions across the Country, despite the clear meaning of the Second Amendment and irrefutable U.S. Supreme Court precedent.The fact remains that in the U.S. the natural law right of armed self-defense is not to be denied, ignored, dismissed, or abrogated.The right of armed self-defense is itself subsumed in the broader category of the right of self-defense, i.e., the natural law right of a person to defend him or herself against predatory attack whether from predatory four-legged beast, two-legged beast, or predatory Government.Armed self-defense simply means that a person has the natural law right to possess the best means for ensuring both his physical survival and his autonomy of self against those forces that dare crush body, mind, or spirit. For centuries that best means of self-defense was a firearm. And so, it remains.And, as the forces that crush have garnered more sophisticated weapons to destroy body, mind, and spirit, so, too, have the commonalty of the United States acquired the weaponry and technology necessary to repel attack.Through the years, we have written extensively on this. See e.g., article of December 2, 2021, titled, “Tyranny, Fundamental Rights, and the Armed Citizen.”See also article in Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy.In a world moving closer and closer to Armageddon, in the form of transnational tyranny, and as CCP China and western neoliberal Globalist overseers carve up the world between them, the U.S. as a free Constitutional Republic cannot long remain separate and apart from the emergence of a one-world neofeudalistic governmental empire unless the American people assert their sovereign authority over Government. This should not be difficult but, through time, it has become so, for many Americans. Why is that? It is for these major reasons, among others:

• Consolidation of information organs into one massive organ of propaganda, targeting the public on an industrial scale;
• Incessant, noxious surveillance of the movements of the mass population; 
• Consolidation of federal police, military, intelligence apparatuses into one uniform command structure;
• Merging of Federal Executive and Legislative Branch functions; and attempts to merge the Judicial Branch into the fold; and
• Governmental Social Engineering and Psychological Conditioning Campaigns aimed at confusing, and demoralizing, and inducing fear and hysteria in the polity.

Thus, the forces that crush slowly whittle away at the integrity of the United States as an independent sovereign Nation and slowly soften the resolve of vast swaths of the polity that would otherwise enable the polity to ably resist both the inexorable march toward tyranny and usurpation of the peoples’ sovereignty over Government.The founders of our Nation fought against one tyranny, a long time ago, and, despite insurmountable odds against the British empire—through the titular monarchic head, King George III, and via the true head of Government, the Bank of England, run by the Rothschild banking family—won their freedom from despotism.The Rothschild clan and their henchmen have, through the ensuing years, decades, and centuries, fought to take back what they had lost to what they perceived as merely a ragtag band of colonists.With the aid of technology and advances in the art and science of mass social engineering and psychological conditioning, their despicable efforts have been made appreciably easier. And these Obstructors and Destructors have made vast strides in corrupting the Nation from within, eschewing use of military, at least for the moment; operating surreptitiously; slyly; always in the shadows.In a feudalistic nation that America is becoming, devolving into, the common man—today’s serf—counts for naught.How does one come to see this, to know this? He does so by realizing that the average citizen can no longer, as a matter of natural law right, exercise that natural law right of armed self-defense or, for that matter, self-defense at all. Armed self-defense is not a privilege to be bestowed on one by the grace of Government. It is a natural law right bestowed on and in man by the Divine Creator. It is a right intrinsic to one's very Being. See recent Arbalest Quarrel article published on June 16, 2022, when we discuss this matter at length.The natural law right of self-defense, armed or not, is under attack by a tyrannical Government and by a compliant, obedient legacy Press. This failure to recognize the natural personal right of self-defense and, indeed, to attack the very idea of it, is not happenstance. It is consistent with anti-natural law philosophy as long promoted by and that is a mainstay of the UN, the EU, and of the Council of Europe and which the Biden Administration wholeheartedly complies with, adheres to and endorses, as is clear from the Administration's words and policies. It would be futile to look for any mention of a personal right of self-defense, let alone any mention of a personal right of armed self-defense in the writings of the UN, EU, and Council of Europe. There is none. See Arbalest Quarrel articles on this, especially, our article of December 2, 2021, titled, “Tyranny, Fundamental Rights, and the Armed Citizen,” cited supra; article of February 23, 2022, titled, “Martial Law in Canada; Can it happen in the United States?”; and article posted on March 4, 2022, and article posted on May 1, 2020.A transnationalist, post-nation-state world view—manifesting as a unified global technocratic, corporatist, neofeudalistic empire embracing the world, where the populations of the world are reduced to servitude and must comport with uniform and rigid standards of thought and conduct—is incompatible with the precepts of Individualism, upon which the United States, as a free Constitutional Republic is grounded. Thus, the Biden Administration, as the Obama and the Bush Administrations before it, must be circumspect and devious in devising and implementing policies and initiatives that are antithetical to the strictures of the United States Constitution, and, especially, those of the Bill of Rights—that component of the Nation's Constitution upon which the sanctity and inviolability of Selfhood and personal autonomy is predicated and guaranteed, and upon which the sole sovereignty of the American people over Government is promised and upon which that sovereignty rests.But as the Rothschild henchmen in control of the levers of the Federal Government and of the Press and of the multinational corporations have sown the seeds of our Nation’s destruction—even impacting the States, through the efforts, and money, and organizational acumen of the Henchman in Chief, George Soros, who has, alone, done much damage sowing the seeds of our Nation’s destruction down to the regional and even local levels—there will come a time, which is rapidly approaching, where the puppet-masters, through their legions of pawns, will make known and transparent, the elaborate plans and machinations heretofore prepared in secret, feeling, perhaps concluding, that stealth and concealment is no longer necessary and, in fact, is no longer possible.Consider the circumstances surrounding the prosecution—more to the point, the persecution—of a young American Patriot, Kyle Rittenhouse. Here is a man who sought merely to protect a small corner of society from destruction; such instability, and violence, and destruction that the Neoliberal Globalist Billionaires and Neo-Marxist internationalist Obstructors and Corrupters of our society concocted, funded, organized, and promoted; and then, through command of their "attack dogs," an assortment of dangerous, fanatical, and deranged agitators, unleashed on American society to create fear, and chaos. And, of course, the Kenosha police stood on the sidelines, but they did so because they wanted to let radical Marxist psychopaths tear down the City?  No! Their training and instincts would be to protect the City and its residents from riots spawned by the Government lackeys of the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist puppet masters who needed a pretext for a controlled political riot, consistent with their aim to destabilize society and to demoralize the polity. Fox News laid this all out. See Fox News Commentator, Tucker Carlson, explaining the circumstances that led to the riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the news account titled, "Tucker Carlson: Why did the people in charge let Kenosha be destroyed?" The news story was published on November 17, 2021.Carlson says, in pertinent part:“So it's worth pausing for a moment to ask, how did we get here? Well, here's one summary that caught our eye. Today, a Hill staffer called Billy Gribbin summed it up in the following way, 'We're waiting to see if riots break out because of media lies about a case from a riot that happened because of media lies.'Well, that's nicely put and it's totally true. The August 2020 riot in Kenosha wasn't really a riot in the way that we understand riots. It was an outbreak of political violence. It began three days after the Democratic convention. That was the context for it. It was, in fact, one of many riots that summer across the country, all of which were explicitly supported by the leadership of the Democratic Party. We're not making this up. Look it up. What was the point of these riots? Big picture, the point was to unseat Donald Trump. In the specific case of Kenosha, we know exactly the chain of events that led to where we are today. A man called Jacob Blake was shot by the police. Immediately, the media and the Democratic politicians they serve lied about what happened. So they told us that a cop shot Jacob Blake in the back for no apparent reason – and by the way, Jacob Blake was unarmed, he was helpless, they just pulled him out of a lineup and shot him because that's what America is like.Based on the first false stories from the news media told intentionally, our leaders suggested that these riots in Kenosha were somehow justified and then allowed them to continue. So this is what Kenosha looked like the night that Kyle Rittenhouse arrived to help defend local businesses. You can't allow that because if you do allow that, people get killed – as they did. But local police, you should know, did virtually nothing to stop any of the things you just saw. From the very top of the power structure, the state of Wisconsin, the word was let it happen. Various scenes of vandalism, looting, arson and riotingWell that's not a civil rights protest, that's not people fighting back against oppression, systemic racism. That's just people destroying things they didn't build. That's people wrecking our civilization. In no normal country would that be allowed, it would be put down immediately with force. That's why we have police. “The governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, turned down an offer from Washington to send federal officers in order to help get Kenosha under control, to save the city. That was a shockingly irresponsible decision, it was an immoral decision. But Tony Evers still defends it, 'I have no regrets.'” Really? That's because he doesn't live in Kenosha. Downtown Kenosha burned. It will never be rebuilt. Talk about a city that doesn't deserve any of this. Kenosha is just a town of 100,000 people, many of them Hispanic, if that even matters. But it's true, they're not rich people who live there.Kenosha is far past its prime. It was part of the industrial base that built this country that built the modern world. Now it's suffering even more than it was before the riots because a bunch of entitled antisocial lunatics broke things for no reason. Because our leaders allowed them. A city official estimates the damage from last summer's riots at about $50 million. That's a lot in Kenosha, in fact it's about more than half the entire municipal budget for the city of Kenosha.”  Only Fox News bothered to delve into the circumstances of the riot. The seditious legacy Press, on the other hand, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, along with major Cable News organizations including CNN and MSNBC never did bother to ask why the Police had allowed rampant disorder to occur in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It wasn't the fault of the police. The fault rests solely on the State Government and specifically on the Governor, who, after the fact, brazenly. incomprehensibly asserted that he has 'no regrets.'The Governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, a Democrat, ordered the police to stand down and refrained from accepting assistance that the Government in Washington, D.C.,Evers not only allowed a City in Wisconsin to burn and allowed residents of the City to be terrorized. He condoned it. In fact, he enabled it. He wanted this to happen.A rational person must therefore conclude that it wasn't mere incompetence that led to the destruction of a City. It was a deliberate act on the part of Government to allow for this; to enable this; to want this to happen, as Governor Evers was aware of the imminence of the danger to citizens and to businesses in Kenosha.So, it was left to an armed citizen to take upon himself the responsibility that the police, whose duty, and obligation it was to preserve and protect public order in the community, had instead consciously, deleteriously, and unconscionably relinquished, surrendering meekly, abjectly to a psychopathic and psychotic mob.For his troubles—this American Horatius, guarding "The Bridge" in Kenosha, Wisconsin—Kyle Rittenhouse, was charged with several felony counts; the most serious involved his shooting of the psychotic animal, Joseph Rosenbaum. Video evidence alone made clear beyond a reasonable doubt to the public and to the jurors who sat in judgment of Kyle's actions, a case for justifiable homicide, grounded on the legal right of self-defense—a long held in law and well-recognized—defense to threat against one's life, and an absolute defense, when the individual asserting the right is not the aggressor. And, despite the imbecilic prosecution of Kyle in which the prosecutors sought to treat Kyle, inter alia, as the aggressor, rather than the victim, the jury saw through the prosecution's ruse and wouldn't buy into it. The incident occurred back in 2020.Yet, the puppet-masters demanded the head of Kyle Rittenhouse because Rosenbaum and others were, consciously or not, tearing down the fabric of American society in furtherance of the nightmarish Soros/Rothschild goal to destroy the Nation. For, once that was accomplished, the remains of the United States may be merged effortlessly and seamlessly into a greater neoliberal international world order a.k.a. new world order a.k.a. the Soros “Open Society.” The puppet-masters had to make an example of Kyle Rittenhouse. When the puppet-masters order the destruction of Towns and Cities in America, those who attempt to defend against the destruction of those American Towns and Cities are the criminals—not the psychopathic and psychotic destroyers of the Towns and Cities—for they are the tools of the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist puppet-masters, doing the bidding of them and for them. None of those rioters were ever charged with a crime, and Wisconsin' s Governor was never called out for greasing the skids, enabling for the riot to happen. Only Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with a crime: several crimes, in fact, including the worst of crimes: murder. Defense of self against psychotics and psychopaths intent on killing one count for nothing against a charge of murder, when those psychopaths and psychotics are working on behalf of Government, that itself is the progenitor of destruction of America. It is a topsy-turvy Country, indeed, that we live in when it is innocent 21st Century American Patriots that are the one treated as the scourge of society, rather than the actual would-be destroyers of it.Fortunately, for both Kyle Rittenhouse and for the rest of us, a jury of his peers did not buy into the moronic insult. The jury realized the right of armed self-defense for them, no less than for the man on trial, realizing that all Americans were on trial here. The message is plain: self-defense is not considered a legal defense against a charge of homicide when the perpetrators of violence and the aggressors in a confrontation are treated as the non-aggressive victims, and the true victim is, himself, treated as the violent aggressor.The incident here occurred in 2020. The trial—itself a travesty—demanded by the Neoliberal Globalist puppet-masters—should never have taken place and would never have taken place if the rotten weeds that Soros had planted at the local and regional levels had not taken root. See Arbalest Quarrel article on the Kyle Rittenhouse case, published on November 19, 2021.More recently, an innocent man, a naturalized citizen from the Dominican Republic, Jose Alba, was immediately arrested for killing a vicious predator, a creature with a lengthy rap sheet, Austin Simon.Alba, like Rittenhouse, had successfully defended his life against predatory attack from an unrepentant, serial criminal. See, e.g., article in the New York Post. For his trouble, having had the audacity to defend himself against a psychopath and surviving the vicious attack, found himself, oddly and absurdly, on Riker’s Island, courtesy of a Soros backed and funded prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, Manhattan District Attorney.One cannot but wonder: if the tables were turned, and the psychopath, Austin Simon had killed Jose Alba, would Bragg have sent Simon immediately to Rikers Island? Judging by Bragg’s performance to date, protecting predators, which would never have happened. See article titled, “Self-defense is Now Murder,” in the Daily Sentinel.See also Tucker Carlson’s news coverage and video on Fox News.Bragg’s audacious attack on a citizen who defended himself with a knife makes patently clear that the incessant attack by the legacy Press, by the Democrat Party-controlled Congress, and by the Harris-Biden Administration about “guns” isn’t really about guns at all. The public is recognizing an assault on the natural law right of self-defense itself against predatory man, predatory beast, and, most importantly—for survival of a free Republic—predatory Government. If a man has a lawful, Constitutional right to repel tyranny, that fact vindicates the right of self-defense. But a tyrant can never allow for that, hence the attack on the natural law right of self-defense.Had Alba defended his life with a firearm, rather than a knife, the Manhattan DA’s handling of the case would not have been different. But Bragg and the Press would have inserted the issue of guns into the narrative if they could. In the Alba case, they couldn’t do that, even though in some instances, the seditious legacy Press does interject discussion of guns even if doing so is discordant.But the fact that an instance of self-defense occurred, via knife, and not a firearm in this instance is telling. It points to the fact that Government, be it Federal, State, or municipal—when under the thumb of the ultra-wealthy and powerful Neoliberal Globalists and wild and rabid Neo-Marxists, in league with the Globalists, as they happen to share the common goal of dismantling a free Republic—does not recognize the sanctity of Selfhood, the right of a person to be free from Government intrusion on one's autonomy of Personhood. What better evidence of this invasive, arrogant assault on the inviolability of body, mind, spirit, and soul, than for Government to usurp for itself an individual's natural law right of personal defense and doing so without reference to firearms as a factor in the story's telling. Might the Press not wish to talk now about banning knives? Great Britain has done so because the Nation has already banned guns; so, the next weapon to ban from the commonalty, lest the common people have the mind to rebel against tyranny, must need be the "knife." See article by Thomas Xavier, writing about UK Knife prohibitions and restrictions, citing to the UK website, reciting UK "Knife laws", a draconian over-the-top response—but, more likely, simply a pretext—to "rising knife crime" in the UK.So, knives are the next in a natural progression to keep the public defenseless and fearful in the UK and, just as likely in the U.S. down the road as well, if or when guns are banned. This would require the American public to look only to the Government for succor and safety—succor and safety that is always in short supply in Government and doled out sparingly, in major part to keep the public in a constant state of fear and tension. It isn't a pleasant scenario for the British, and certainly would not be a pleasant scenario for Americans. Neither a ban on guns nor knives should a Country, namely the U.S., conceived in freedom and liberty, wish to emulate of the British subject. But we are moving inexorably and rapidly in that horrible direction. The actions of the Soros installed Alvin Bragg as Manhattan District Attorney, in audaciously arresting Jose Alba, and initially charging him with murder for defending himself against a threat to his life by a psychopathic serial criminal— and the bizarre Courtroom arguments of Kenosha County District Attorney, Thomas Binger, charging Kyle Rittenhouse with serious felonies, including, inter alia, first degree intentional homicide and first degree reckless homicide and prosecuting him for those crimes, despite incontrovertible video evidence supporting a finding of justifiable homicide on the basis of self-defense—are scenarios both pointing to a disturbing development and trend  in our Nation's jurisprudence.Americans are witnessing confounding but irrefutable evidence of Government antipathy toward the sanctity and inviolability of one's Selfhood—too prevalent and too conspicuous to ignore or to perfunctorily dismiss.The recognition that the State doesn't recognize one's natural law right of self-defense logically entails the proposition that the State no longer recognizes and will not acknowledge that one's life is truly one's own. The actions of the Kenosha and Manhattan District Attorneys point to this outrageous and deeply troubling revision of centuries of American jurisprudence and clear renunciation of the central tenet of the Bill of Rights: In America, one's life belongs to the State by tacit State edict, not to oneself, by grace of the Divine Creator. This means that it is the State, and the State alone, not the individual who decides whether one lives or dies; whether one has a right to life or not; and whether the taking of the life of another is to be declared lawful or not. Thus, the Biden Administration that would at once deny an American citizen's right to use a firearm in one's own defense and would, simultaneously, declare that it is the will of the State to decree whether an unborn child has the right to life, substituting its will for that of the Divine Creator. These are incredibly obtuse and pompous ideas.The Rittenhouse case in Kenosha, Wisconsin takes on clarity and renewed importance in view of the recent Jose Alba case, in New York City. The Alba case in the news draws a narrow focus on self-defense sans guns. The issue transcends the matter of armed self-defense, which is subsumed in the more general God-Given Right of Self-Defense itself. The issue of "Right-to-Life" be it the unborn child or the right of one born are equivalents: THE RIGHT TO BE. The core natural law right and legitimacy of self-defense, THE RIGHT TO SURVIVE IN BODY, MIND, AND SPIRIT, is at stake, irrespective of the means. The State/Government has fixated on firearms only because the State/Government as the ultimate, dangerous predator recognizes that it is most threatened itself by the armed citizenry. Unarmed individuals pose little threat to THE TYRANT. Numbers by themselves are of little concern to a Tyrant State/Government backed by a massive standing army, equally massive paramilitary police force, a massive intelligence apparatus, and a massive propaganda/media organ. But one hundred million well-armed citizens pose a clear and present danger to the Tyrant' power and control over the citizenry. This explains the constant media attention spent not only on the armed citizenry but on the nature of the firearms, component parts of firearms, and the kinds and extent of the ammunition held by that armed citizenry. There is constant gibberish over "assault weapons," "weapons of war," "large-capacity magazines," 50 caliber ammunition, armor-piercing ammunition, suppressors, body-armor—anything and everything that the State/Government infers to pose an imminent and existential threat to its own vast power and control over the citizenry. Yet, one should stop and think for a minute that the framers of the Constitution intended the armed citizen to be equipped with personnel "weapons of war" precisely to operate as a counterweight to the State/Government precisely because of the tendency of the State/Government to usurp the sovereignty of the American people and become the master rather than the servant of the people. A free Constitutional Republic has nothing to fear from its citizens. A Tyrant, on the other hand, has everything to fear from its citizens, as well it should fear its citizens, in that eventuality.Is it coincidence this present Federal Government has taken a much more concerted stance against the right of the people to keep and bear arms of late? Should the public not prick up its ears at this disturbing series of Government bravado and action?The aim of the Neo-Marxist and Neoliberal Globalist push to destroy the Nation from within is insidiously directed to rendering the citizenry helpless while the forces that crush, plot and machinate to devastate the economy, mock America’s Christian faith, and promote societal decay. But total societal collapse cannot occur and will not occur so long as Americans remained armed and armed to the hilt. That is our winning hand: a royal straight flush. And the would-be destroyers of a free Republic know this. A truly free Constitutional Republic as the framers of the Constitution had designed for us need not fear its armed citizenry. In fact, the Federal Government should welcome it, take pride in it. The fact that it does not and openly fears this armed citizenry should tell the citizenry much of where this Government intends to take us. And it is not a good place.The Majority of the U.S. Supreme Court is aware of the dire state of our Republic, and it intends to remind Congress and the Biden Administration and the Corruptors of our Nation that the American people are still sovereign over their Nation and over this Government, and they intend to remain so. The Government and the Neoliberal Globalists and Neo-Marxist internationalists don't want to hear this and they are pushing back, they are pushing back hard; doubling down on their efforts to consolidate as much power as they can prior to the November Midterm elections to weaken a Republican Party sweep of Congress.So it is that, even as the right of the people to keep and bear arms gains support through most members of the U.S. Supreme Court, the pawns of the puppet-masters will continue to thwart the citizen’s right to keep and bear arms as long as they can to the extent that they can.One of the puppets, New York Governor Hochul, has made plain that she doesn’t give a damn about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bruen. In fact, New York’s recent enactment of amendments to its concealed handgun carry license structure set forth in Penal Code Section 400.00 now makes it even more difficult to obtain a concealed handgun carry license than before the Bruen ruling.The Governor’s defiance and that of the New York State Legislature in Albany is so blatant, so arrogant, so odious, so all-encompassing as to draw incredulity but for the fact that it is not merely rumor or extravagant musing. It is all etched in stone—and we lay all of that out for you in our next few articles.____________________________________Copyright © 2022 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.         

THE RIGHT OF SELF-DEFENSE WAS ON TRIAL IN THE RITTENHOUSE CASE; AND THIS TIME WE THE PEOPLE, WON!

A couple of days prior to the jury’s decision in the Rittenhouse case, the New York Times posted an editorial, titled, “The Truth About Kyle Rittenhouse’s Gun,” by Times Opinion Columnist, Farhad Manjoo. In part, the Columnist said this,“I’ve spent the past couple of weeks riveted by the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the white teenager who shot and killed two people and injured a third during a night of Black Lives Matter protests and civil unrest in Kenosha, Wis., last year.It was a turbulent case. For many days the prosecution was on the ropes — some of the state’s witnesses seemed to bolster the defense’s case that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. But on Monday, the lead prosecutor, Thomas Binger, offered a meticulously documented closing argument that deftly summarized all the ways Rittenhouse acted unlawfully. That’s because it cleverly unraveled some of the foundational tenets of gun advocacy: That guns are effective and necessary weapons of self-defense. That without them, lawlessness and tyranny would prevail. And that in the right hands — in the hands of the “good guys” — guns promote public safety rather than destroy it.In the Rittenhouse case, none of that was true. At every turn that night, Rittenhouse’s AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle made things worse, ratcheting up danger rather than quelling it. The gun transformed situations that might have ended in black eyes and broken bones into ones that ended with corpses in the street. And Rittenhouse’s gun was not just a danger to rival protesters. According to his own defense, the gun posed a grave threat to Rittenhouse himself — he said he feared being overpowered and then shot with his own weapon.This is self-defense as circular reasoning: Rittenhouse says he carried a rifle in order to guarantee his safety during a violent protest. He was forced to shoot at four people when his life and the lives of other people were threatened, he says. What was he protecting everyone from? The gun strapped to his own body, the one he’d brought to keep everyone safe.” ~ Portions of an article from an Editorial appearing in The New York Times, on November 17, 2021, titled “The Truth About Kyle Rittenhouse’s Gun,” by Times Opinion Columnist, Farhad Manjoo.Well, the jury in the Rittenhouse case just blew this absurd New York Times editorial out of the water.At the core of the Second Amendment rests the right of self-defense. This isn’t a supposition. This isn’t theory. This isn’t opinion. And it certainly isn’t a mere fervent wish. Self-defense is at the heart of the inviolability of personhood; the sanctity of mind, body, and spirit.No other Nation on Earth, but the United States, talks about the Right of self-defense as a fundamental, unalienable, natural law right, and truly means it; has etched it in stone in its Constitution.What does the International Community have to say about this? Read all the documents you will, disseminated by the UN and the EU. They all go on about human dignity and the right to life, sure. But you will struggle to find one that even mentions the right of “self-defense.”You won’t see it. You won’t find it. It doesn’t exist. But, then, are not the words, “right to life” and “human dignity” vacuous in the absence of the inherent, natural, God-given right of self-defense to secure one’s life? And isn’t individual responsibility an important component in that equation?The Right of self-defense is embedded in the right of the people to keep and bear arms.A firearm is the best means of self-protection and has, for centuries, been thus.The right of the people to keep and bear arms is merely a reiteration of and reminder to Government that the Right of the people to keep and bear arms means the Right of self-defense, be it employment of self-defense against attack by beast, person, or the tyranny of Government.Make no mistake—the most cherished right of every human being was on trial in the Rittenhouse case: The right of self-defense.The seditious Press will play the outcome of this case as it has from the outset; as the aforementioned splice from The New York Times editorial presents—that the Rittenhouse case is about guns and the need to place further constraints on the Right to keep and bear them.That has been the messaging droning on, all along: guns promote lawlessness; guns threaten public safety and order; guns don’t belong in a civilized society; guns aggrandize vigilantism; and so on and so forth.But the Rittenhouse case isn’t really about guns. It never was.The case is about the inherent, natural, immutable, God-given Right of Self-Defense. And as the case proved, armed self-defense works damn well. Kyle Rittenhouse would have suffered serious injury and probable death had he not been armed. No question about it. No one seriously doubts it.A brave, young man, looking for neither glory nor condemnation, went to Kenosha, to protect the city of his father from destruction. He did that because the police couldn’t because an effete State Government wouldn’t let the police fulfill its main function; its official mandate: to protect the community it serves.The people themselves would have to step up, and one young man did.Many journalists and commentators will say, in the days, weeks, and months to follow, that the jury came to the wrong conclusions in each of the counts against Kyle Rittenhouse. Some, though, will admit that the case was a weak one from the start. The seditious Press will rant and rave, fume, and make excuses, and will issue dire warnings of what the outcome of this case portends for society, which undoubtedly the Press will, wittingly or not, foment.But the truth of the matter is that the case against Kyle was, from the start, not only weak, it was absurd.Video evidence alone demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that an angry mob, out for blood, intended to seriously injure or kill Kyle Rittenhouse. The mob was chasing after Kyle. Kyle wasn't chasing after them. Kyle did his level best to avoid confrontation. And that is a critical point where a person claims self-defense.The State’s case against Kyle was nonsensical from start to finish. It was an oblique attack on the inherent right of self-defense. But it was also a direct assault on civilian ownership and possession of firearms.The prosecution argued that, if a person has a right to self-defense, Kyle certainly didn’t because he didn’t play fair: he brought a gun to a knife fight, notwithstanding that one of the attackers did bring and did point a loaded handgun at Kyle.But the prosecutors never charged that third attacker, Grosskreutz, for unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon. Strange that.The prosecutors created a story that Kyle, by carrying a rifle that night in Kenosha, was looking for trouble. The State constantly used a buzzword, “active shooter” to describe Kyle.The prosecutors employed rhetoric instead of reason to entice, seduce, and mislead the jury. It didn’t work. The jury saw through the sham. They were never taken in by it.And, fortunately, justice was served. The jury obeyed the instructions as given them by the Judge. The jury wasn’t deluded by Biden’s insulting and ludicrous and false assertion that Kyle is a “white supremacist” or by claims that the Rittenhouse case is all about vigilantism—as if any of that would or should have bearing on the case, anyway.But let’s cut to the chase. This case was and is about one thing: the right of self-defense, and whether the employment of it was reasonable under the circumstances. Wisconsin law is clear about this:

• Wis. Stat. § 939.48 Self-defense and defense of others, says this:

“A person is privileged to threaten or intentionally use force against another for the purpose of preventing or terminating what the person reasonably believes to be an unlawful interference with his or her person by such other person. The actor may intentionally use only such force or threat thereof as the actor reasonably believes is necessary to prevent or terminate the interference. The actor may not intentionally use force which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm unless the actor reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself.”The jury found that, on all Counts, Kyle Rittenhouse complied with the Wisconsin law of self-defense. He never shot to kill. He shot to stop aggressive attacks on life, and when the threat passed, Kyle stopped. And one should take careful note:Wisconsin law doesn’t assert or imply a limitation on the use of firearms for self-defense.On the contrary, the State Supreme Court of Wisconsin reiterated the right of armed self-defense.In the recent case, State vs. Roundtree, 395 Wis. 2d 94, 952 N.W.2d 765 (2021) the Court opined that “the core right identified in Heller, is ‘the right of a law-abiding, responsible citizen to possess and carry a weapon for self-defense. . . .’”See also State vs. Christen, 396 Wis. 2d. 705, 958 N.W.2d 746 (Wis. 2021), and note, once the defendant successfully raises the self-defense privilege, the State has the burden to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. And that standard is a difficult one for the State to overcome. Moreover, if the State cannot meet the standard of proof, then the privilege automatically applies to any crime based on the conduct directed to the criminal charges.  “Wisconsin has codified the privilege of self-defense. § 939.48(1) (‘A person is privileged to threaten or intentionally use force against another for the purpose of preventing or terminating what the person reasonably believes to be an unlawful interference with his or her person by such other person.’). This self-defense privilege extends further in the context of the home where the privilege may include the presumptive right to use deadly force. See § 939.48(1m)(ar). When a defendant successfully raises the self-defense privilege, the State has the burden to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. State v. Head, 2002 WI 99, ¶106, 255 Wis. 2d 194, 648 N.W.2d 413. If the State cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt at trial that the defendant did not act in self-defense then the self-defense privilege serves as ‘a defense to prosecution for any crime based on that conduct.’ § 939.45.” The jury, in the Rittenhouse case, obviously determined the prosecution failed to overcome the self-defense privilege in each of the charges brought against Kyle Rittenhouse involving the use of his weapon for self-defense. Hence, all the charges related to the use of his weapon for self-defense automatically drop.The Press will, no doubt, have a field day with this turn of events. Let us hope the U.S. Supreme Court in Bruen, will recognize and make abundantly clear the right of armed self-defense doesn’t stop at the doorstep of one’s home.______________________________________Copyright © 2021 Roger J Katz (Towne Criour), Stephen L. D’Andrilli (Publius) All Rights Reserved.