Will Rittenhouse acquittal lead to more armed confrontations at protests?
Legal experts fear protesters may increasingly arm themselves openly and attempt to mete out vigilante justice after a jury on Friday acquitted 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in the fatal shooting of two men during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.
“I find this so troubling. We’re at a point where a person with a plastic bag who has an encounter with someone with an AR-15 where we say it’s the person with a plastic bag who is a deadly threat,” said Ion Meyn, an assistant professor of law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How does someone recognize if we have an active shooter or not? What do we do now going forward?”
The rise of Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality in recent years sparked armed counterprotests in
