Kyle Rittenhouse abruptly departed the stage during an appearance at the University of Memphis on Wednesday, after he was confronted about comments made by Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk.

Rittenhouse was invited by the college’s Turning Point USA chapter to speak at the campus. However, the event was met with backlash from a number of students who objected to Rittenhouse’s presence.

The 21-year-old gained notoriety in August 2020 when, at the age of 17, he shot and killed two men—Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as injuring 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz—at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

He said the three shootings, carried out with a semi-automatic AR-15-style firearm, were in self-defense. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest where the shootings took place was held after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was left paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot by a white police officer.

  • quindraco
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    3 months ago

    He was literally acquitted of murder. I’m not saying he’s famous - he’s really an obscure nobody - but his biggest claim to fame not only is legally not murder, claiming it is murder in a way people might take seriously, like a newspaper article, would open you up to liability for slander, since you’d be making claims it would be easy to prove in court you knew to be false when you made them.

    He’s a killer, yes. He killed people. That’s considered potentially distinct from murder in checks notes every country on Earth.

    • MsPenguinette@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      OJ is a murderer and so is Rittenhouse and Zimmerman. If they want to sue me, they can go ahead.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Go ahead and sue me. He is a murderer. Just because the state messed up the case doesn’t make him less than a murderer.

      If you kill someone and the police never catch you are you a murderer? If they catch you but don’t have enough evidence to go forward are you a murderer? If they mess up the chain of custody of evidence are you a murderer?

      Who you are as a person is not altered by what some civil servants say about you. If the entire planet earth said I was a giant purple one eyed monster that wouldn’t make it so.

      He wasn’t convicted of murder doesn’t make him not a murderer. No go ahead and sue me for whatever bullshit you want.

      • quindraco
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        3 months ago

        Nothing you said makes sense.

        Go ahead and sue me.

        Why on Earth would I do that?

        He is a murderer. Just because the state messed up the case doesn’t make him less than a murderer.

        And you declaring him a murderer doesn’t make him one any more than the state’a failure makes him not one - neither of which is relevant, since we’re discussing what he’s famous for, not making value judgments.

        If you kill someone and the police never catch you are you a murderer?

        In every country on Earth, including whichever one you live in, it is possible to kill someone without it being murder. This is true in every culture and every religion.

        Who you are as a person is not altered by what some civil servants say about you.

        Now we’re out past the deep end of irrelevancy. At least when you were focused on actions people did or did not take, you were within the same ballpark as the topic. Who people are as persons has absolutely no relevancy. You might as well as brought up different ways to make pasta.

        You sound deeply unhinged. You might want to take a deep breath and figure out what you’re even talking about.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          You sound deeply unhinged.

          I get to sue you now. No court on earth has established that. And any value judgement, by your own admission, must be backed up by a court.

          Pity you don’t know the difference between accidentally killing someone and showing up with a gun to an already crazy situation.