The judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is a hero

I view planning to kill someone and preparing to kill someone as two different things. Planning X is done in anticipation that you will do X, preparation is done to be ready should X become necessary.

Someone who carries a firearm strictly for their own defense is not in any way morally equivalent to someone who is hoping for or trying to engender violence.

No. It is still a crime to use a deadly weapon against another person even if you have their consent.

Yes. Run.

How can that be if mutual combat is not unlawful? Please enlighten me, I'm not being sarcastic, I'm not familiar enough with the American court system.

You mean the first part where I went, "What?" That wasn't so much a question as an expression of shock and/or dismay.

The law here probably varies from state to state, but generally you cannot commit a deliberate deadly act on another person even if that person consents. You can't shoot your terminally ill grandpa in the head because he wanted you to. The law does not allow for one person to, say, shoot another person except in the case of self-defense (or in some other very limited circumstances).

You mean like the difference between a fight breaking out because of road rage and a professional boxing match? If so, that's actually a good question.

It is a good question, but I think boxing is unambiguously a sport rather than actual combat because its context entails rules (e.g., about where you can strike the other fighter), protective gear (e.g., mouthpieces and gloves), regulation (e.g., referee), etc. Boxing by design is not done to the death, and, indeed, any significant injury or impairment to either fighter will result in the match being stopped.

I believe the biggest difference is that boxing is highly regulated (or at least it's supposed to be), and that winning isn't necessarily synonymous with killing or knocking out your opponent. Stuff like MMA is only legal in the context of a sporting event, which again is supposed to be highly regulated. It's like how random sword fights are still illegal while fencing has been allowed forever.

So where does this "mutual combat" thing that's not unlawful come into play?

Again, I stress, no sarcasm.

I'm not sure how Elwood meant that.

But my understanding is that if the police encounter two persons having a fist fight, they will arrest both (given sufficient cause) even if the two had agreed to have the fight. There isn't a circumstance where some bystander says "They want to have it out!" and the police say "Oh, all right then. Carry on" while one beats the other unconscious.

If they're wearing boxing gloves or they're just wrestling, then perhaps all is okay. But if they're looking to truly injure one another, the cops will have to stop it.

Tyranny!

Indeed!

So "mutual combat" isn't a legal thing? Heard about it a lot and wanted to understand how that worked.

I don't know, but when I was a kid in school, if students got into a physical fight, a teacher or staff would break it up, make the combatants shake hands, and then send them back to lunch/class/whatever. If it was really bad, it might be followed by a 1 to 3 day suspension. Nowadays, cops are called and charges are filed.

Good Lord I'm getting old. Back then, we were actually encouraged to stand up to bullies and kick their ass or go down swinging.

It apparently is a thing. According to this Wikipedia article, it is unlawful in some places, which suggests that is lawful in others.

Edit: according to this link, mutual combat is lawful in the U.S. only in the states of Washington and, you guessed it, Texas.

So the nanny society? Yeah, we have that here.

And yeah, unfortunately we're all getting old...

I think it's a legal thing inasmuch as deciding who's guilty of what and to what degree in court, but it isn't a legal to participate in....except for the combat sports stuff already mentioned.

Pistols at dawn you...you fop! You ninny! Heathen philosopher!!!!

Damn right I went there.

Loathesome scaramouch! I'll puncture your verminous hide, you lily-livered poltroon!

YOU and your knees bent, running about advancing behavior!

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries! I fart in your general direction!

Of course the big lie for that one is that the kid who stands up to the bully always wins. Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, my business partner likes to recount the story of how in his high school if two kids got into it they wrestling coach dragged them both to a back room in the gym where there was a crude boxing ring. The coach had them put on heavily padded boxing gloves and tell them to have at it. Usually it took about 30 seconds for both of them to crap out, long before any real damage could be done. It's hard to appreciate just how exhausting fighting is if you're not trained and conditioned.

Oh, it is. As an amateur boxer I can tell you, you have no idea how tired you get in just the first 30 seconds. Those three minutes feel like a lifetime.

Hence, "...or go down swinging". In my experience though, win or lose, they stop being messed with. Bullies only like to fuck with people that won't fight back. If and when someone does fight back, even if they get knocked on their ass, the bully will usually move on to someone else. That's just my experience though...and that experience is decades old, so it might be different now.

I fought back (poorly), but the bullying didn't stop.

I guess YMMV. Nobody would make eye contact with me my first year in High School because of one little scrap I got into my last year in Junior High. Technically, I "lost" because the next day I had a black eye, but I put the fear of God Almighty in the bully, his friends, and everyone on the bus we'd just gotten off of with my manly display of screaming like a little girl, blubbering, snotting all over the place and talking high pitched gibberish while I knocked him down, jumped on him, and started strangling him bare handed until a neighbor came over and knocked me off of him.

Fight and lose doesn't help much if you're the weakest link.

I know at one time dueling was illegal in New York state (why Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr went to New Jersey).

I woudn’t be surprised if most states have similar old laws still on the books.

If they do, they may be more modern than the Judge, who apparently can't archive his friends' texts without fucking up their JPGs.