“The man who bought Kyle Rittenhouse an assault-style rifle when he was only 17 has agreed to plead no contest to contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” Huffington Post reported on Sunday, January 9, 2022 (read story here).
If the judge accepts the plea deal, Dominick Black (at left in photo below), 20, will avoid having a felony record by paying a $2,000 fine. “Black was 18 when he purchased the rifle for Rittenhouse at a hardware store in Rusk County” because “Rittenhouse was too young to legally purchase the weapon,” Huffington Post said.
Black’s penalty seems light, considering he trafficked a deadly weapon to an immature child who took it to a riot and shot three people with it. But it’s better than nothing.
The Georgia vigilantes who murdered black jogger Ahmaud Arbery won’t so lucky. They got life in prison.
It just seems to me that if we want to be safe, and live in a society governed by the rule of law, you can’t have armed men or children running around with military weapons taking the law into their own hands, which is what all of these people — Rittenhouse included — did.
Cook county made a couple of new records. 1012 killings with guns and 2000 deaths to opioids. 80% of the shooting deaths were black. Nearly all were black on black and few were police killing black citizens. Many of the shooters were under 18 and earning their way into a gang. Doubt the niceties of age really comes into the mix on the south side. Someone older and an adult procured a weapon for underage youth, but not a priority for Cook county. No suppliers are on national news getting a plea deal.
That doesn’t justify a strawman purchase of an AR-15 for an underage youth who couldn’t legally purchase it himself. The fact Chicago has a huge crime problem doesn’t mean the rest of society should tolerate vigilantes or those who illegally arm them.