That might be enough, combined with the fact that he’s seen pivoting about at one point with the AR pointing in the direction of others around him.
I don’t see it unreasonable to assume that a person in this situation might still use that firearm than not. Especially given that some in the crowd were confirming a prior use.
The reasoning here, like for the previous example, can be flipped just as easily.Even more so that Kyle wasn't strafing the crowd with his rifle or issuing verbal threats such as "I'm going to shoot you." What was reasonable was Kyle assuming that jump kick man, Huber, and Grosskreutz were going to cause him great bodily harm or death considering they were kicking him, hitting him with a skateboard, and aiming a gun at him.
The crowd chasing Rittenhouse didn’t issue verbal threats of, “we’re going to beat you to death!”, so Rittenhouse had no reason to suspect that death was his certain fate. Right?
Rittenhouse aimed at jumpkick guy before jumpkick guy even launched into a jumpkick. And Grosskreutz can be seen halting before Rittenhouse when the latter was on his arse and facing his general direction. Grosskreutz could have fired at that time, but did not. That would indicate that killing Rittenhouse wasn’t his intent.
Same for Huber, who struck Rittenhouse with the skateboard while attempting to vault over and disarm him, as opposed to stopping to repeatedly strike. If he was trying to kill Rittenhouse, he’d have stayed on him.
None of these details matter much to Rittenhouse’s mindset, so his decision to fire makes some sense. I agree that what happened did not represent intentional homicide. But, in retrospect, it was not necessarily his best decision, and it certainly wasn’t the only decision.
I’m not sure why folks want to hail Rittenhouse as some kind of hero. He chose to insert himself into the midst of jackassery, and then commit his own handful of acts of supreme dumbfuckery. He has punched the face of responsible firearms ownership and use; his actions couldn’t be a better cudgel for folks to use or legislate against open carry or against firearm owners who are actually responsible enough to know what they’re doing.
