The judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is a hero

Again, not the point. And thus, not the end of the discussion.

I thought the point he was making was that if you travel somewhere armed, you're planning on murdering someone. Hence, "premeditated".

You are planning to “defend yourself and family” by shooting someone if they try to harm you. Therefore, you are, at some level, planning to kill.

Sure...but not to commit a crime.

Yes, yes it is. I have very little patience, especially on a lazy Saturday morning, to conduct a 5th Grade Civics lesson on the basic tenets of Constitutional Law to someone who has, at best, only ever driven past a school of law.

Legality, morality, or any other “reason” is irrelevant. The point is, you are planning for it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t are it.

You may be discussing law. I am not. Nor am I interested in sitting in on any class you may conduct regarding Alabama Civics.

Legally or illegally is the whole point of this discussion. Just because Rittenhouse traveled with a firearm doesn't mean he intended to murder someone.

Prepared to defend yourself =/= Planning to murder someone

@Jenee I'm very interested in this. If you could provide a link to the verification, that would be great.

"...assault involves no bodily contact..."? Is that a typo?

Yeah, I'm wondering about that. The primary point of Assault involves the intent to cause physical injury with the severity of the injury determining the degree of Assault. No injury, no assault.

Do you notice a pattern?

Yeah right. LOL. He's as much a lawyer as you are a Russian Cosmonaut.

Okay. I'm conflating assault with battery.

Yes and no. We can split hairs with individual statutes and the various intricacies of the individual laws of the several States. But, at the end of the day, our interpretation of the words in any given statute don't really matter. Yeah, that's not a typo.

What matters is what the Courts have determined those words to mean AND what the Courts have determined via various rulings. For instance, if you were to receive a text message from my phone saying, "I'm going to kill you, Quincunx" under a basic reading of Alabama law, that would be a threat and punishable under our law governing Harassing Communications. But, it's not. The Supreme Court has determined that you have to choose to read a text message. You have to choose to answer a phone call. You have to choose to listen to a voicemail. You have to choose to read a post on Facebook. You have to choose to read a message on Twitter. You have to choose to watch a video on TikToK. You have to choose to read a post on Wordforge.

Even though a reading of the exceptionally plain verbiage of the law would indicate one thing, the Court has determined another.

An even better one was Disorderly Conduct. From 1975 until around 2008, there was absolutely no law or regulation that prohibited the open carry of a firearm. Again, no law prohibiting it. But, the Police often arrested people for Disorderly Conduct when carrying openly. Further, the Courts not only found these people guilty, the Court of Criminal Appeals and the Supreme Court upheld those lower court rulings.

There's a reason we need lawyers...

Because it's an antiquated term, like affray, that dates back to English Common Law. It's being phased out across the country. The show Law & Order made the term "Assault and Battery" a household term. But, the State of New York has even changed their penal code. Section 120 cleared it up with Assault involving physical injury.

The Courts have, to the best of my knowledge, universally held that Assault involves physical injury. Black's Law Dictionary, the gold standard that every School of Law and Court I know about uses, kind of splits the middle. I'd share the actual quote, but it's on the wall in my office.

Regardless...and I know I'm preaching to the choir in your case...but if I were to say to you, "I'm about one second away from causing your death and/or serious bodily harm", and you reasonably believe I mean it, then you have every right to use deadly force in self defense whether or not I ever lay a hand on you.

Absolutely, provided the threat meets the two, necessary, criteria for being considered a credible threat. A threat requires conveyance and understanding of that threat and a means to carry it out. Saying, "Man Afraid of his Shoes, I'm going to kick your butt" isn't a threat by itself. Saying, "Man Afraid of his Shoes, I'm going to kick your butt" while shaking my hand clenched in a fist is a threat. But, now we're splitting hairs.

I have, literally, two days to sit in the safety and comfort of my office when making a probable cause determination. The guy in the street facing a bad guy has two seconds, or less. As you know, that's why we make these decisions ahead of time.

That's been my understanding. Making someone believe they're going to be hit is assault, actually hitting them is battery.

Rosenbaum is obviously committing assault in the video. It's hard to argue that an angry person shouting "Fuck you!" while chasing and throwing things at someone is not assaulting that someone.

You know what I do when I want an answer to a question? Google. But, if you can’t think of how you could do that, here’s what I did about 2 minutes ago - “summer violence 2020”. The first article - https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/de...violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020/ discusses how most of the protests were peaceful, less than 10% had any violence. There are a few reports in that article describing the arrest and indictment of right wing extremists causing the violence. However, there are many articles listed describing the violence and who has been arrested and charged in that violence.

That wasn’t your question to Fisherman’s Worf - which is what I responded to.

Never said it did. Just saying that it was, in fact, planned.

No. Assault is the interference with one’s right to not be afraid. Battery is the legal term for bodily contact.

I'm aware that the vast majority of the protests were peaceful, but I tried googling it, and I couldn't find anything verifying, yes verifying, that 80 to 90% of the violence was caused by right wingers.

I asked him a question?

80 to 90% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Would you sleep better if I had said “most of the violence last summer was due to right wing extremists and have been arrested and indicted?”

Why not start with something simple and go with the Minneapolis guy with an umbrella.

I suppose it could have been rhetorical, but I took it as a question.

I mean, this is actually interesting.

Could America have legalized duels to the death in this day and age?

How disappointing.

I would if you could back it up.

Yeah, I heard about that guy. I'm aware that right wingers were causing some of the ruckus, but you claimed that it had been VERIFIED that right wingers caused almost all of the violence. I would have loved to rub some right wing noses in that, but you just made it up. Makes you look like the chuckle heads saying it was really Antifa that assaulted the capital.