I've seen any number of people on the left lament the "childish" and immature actions of Kyle Rittenhouse. They want to claim he acted rashly and irrationally due to his age when he killed two, wounded one and fired at another attacker in self defense.
But even the prosecution's presentation of the case shows just the opposite. A scared, panicked child strikes out in all directions - had Rittenhouse acted "childishly", it seems far more likely he would have adopted a "spray and pray" action with his weapon, shooting at anything moving within his field of view.
But he didn't.
He only fired upon his attackers, and then only when the threat from them was evident.
That is a disciplined, thoughtful act, not an emotional, childish one.
If anything, the actions of the attackers were "childish" and irrational.
An interesting angle on the potential makeup of the Kenosha mob on August 25, 2020 – what does the sample of people who attacked Kyle Rittenhouse tell us about the general population of the people “protesting” that night?
I started thinking about this when the prosecution in the Rittenhouse trial tried to make the crowd out to just be fine, upstanding, moral people who were committed to social justice but just happened to enjoy burning cars, dumpsters and buildings and attempted murder in their spare time.
First, the sample of people who attacked Rittenhouse fit the definition of “random” well.
There is no evidence they knew each other, coordinated in any way, arrived to the protest together, nor did they have prior knowledge of Rittenhouse. With the exception of the recently identified “Jump Kick Man” they were all white (Jump Kick is alleged to be black) - that means that 25% of the attackers were non-white, which is oversampling blacks (10.4% of Kenosha’s population) but in line with total minority population (around 30%).
Lastly, there is one strong correlation within this seemingly random sample – that being violent criminal histories. All four have/had lengthy criminal histories, ranging from sexual battery of a child and domestic violence to drug and weapons offenses. Every single one of them had committed at least one serious offense, most being felonies.
So, what does that tell us about the general makeup of the mob there that night?
Well, statistically, a random sample with that high of a degree of consistency within it informs us to a high degree of certainty that the general crowd shared a similar profile. It is highly unlikely that a random sample selected by chance from the larger population would share such a high correlation to one characteristic unless that same characteristic was also highly correlated within the larger population.
If you have a bowl of 100 marbles and randomly select 4 marbles that are all blue, the inference would be that there is a strong possibility the majority of the 100 marbles are blue. Doesn’t mean they all are blue, but there is a significant probability they are.
It is entirely probable the crowd in that area, on that night, consisted of mostly people with violent criminal histories – and given the absence of law enforcement presence, the most likely outcome was what we saw – violent crime.
At least in the area where Rittenhouse was, the statistical inference as a result of the Rittenhouse sample says the population of the mob that night was there to do violence and commit crimes, not to protest the Jacob Blake shooting.
That someone was going to be attacked that night seems to approach a statistical certainty. The crowd just happened to choose a kid with a gun and the maturity to take action to defend himself.