Everyone is frustrated, angry, hurt.

A kid brings a military g*n, a machine of war, across two states, he’s not old enough to even possess that weapon, and he’s bringing it because he’s angry. He is angry because he’s seeing people protest, primarily black people. We know that weeks prior, he told friends while watching a video of looting, “I wish I had a g*n to shoot them.”

There was only one way it was going to end once Kyle got in the car. Kyle was a kid, Kyle is a kid, his brain isn’t mature, his body is pumping testosterone into a brain that doesn’t know what to do with it. He was a hero, he believes he is on the side of what’s right and good. He believes that sh00ting some of these people who are “clearly in the wrong” (in Kyle’s mind) would be the right thing to do.

But this wasn’t about self-defense and that was clear all along. Kyle picked his fight. It might’ve been a fight. It is even possible that Kyle was defending his own life when he did what he did. But he went to Wisconsin wanting to be in a situation where he would get to sh00t that g*n.

No one put it better than Trevor Noah, as we published the other day, and as we will do so again now, there is no doubt as to what was happening here:

https://twitter.com/a1cajun/status/1460021421443325958

I wrote the other day, it is entirely possible that based on the evidence in front of the jury, that this was the right verdict. Had any of us sworn that oath and only heard the evidence in that trial, any of us might have followed the oath and voted the same way.

But that doesn’t make the above quote untrue. It doesn’t make Kyle a hero simply defending property and himself. It doesn’t mean that Kyle didn’t needlessly end someone’s life. It just means that the evidence didn’t prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

He is a kid. And a very messed up kid. If there is any justice in this world, there is a good chance that he will mature into a person who appreciates that he didn’t need to be there and because he was, there are people who lost their lives because of it. It is not the right sentence, but it might be some sort of punishment. Something.

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