We’ve seen what that means in Kenosha, with the tragic outcome.” Judgment isn’t as perfected at age 16 as it is much later. “There are a number of things we don’t allow young people under 18 to do. But she said it appears that minors can possess long guns as long as they’re not sawed off. Jeri Bonavia, executive director of the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, a group that works to reduce gun violence, said the National Rifle Association was making a national push to get guns in children’s hands in the late 1990s and early 2000s in hopes of creating life-time gun owners the caveat may have been part of that push, she said. The impetus for the carve-out isn’t clear. Schroeder himself said he was confused about it when Richards first asked him to toss the possession charge out earlier this year. Legislative records show the statutory language went through multiple revisions until at least 2011. But that law also allowed minors to possess long guns for hunting as long as the barrels were at least a foot long. Four years later, Thompson signed another law extending the prohibition to any firearm. Tommy Thompson, a Republican, signed a law that year that expanded the prohibition to include short-barreled firearms, electric weapons, brass knuckles, throwing stars and nunchakus. Prior to 1987, Wisconsin banned children from possessing pistols. The evolution of the law on children and guns is murky. “We knew from the beginning, that if you read that statute correctly, he was legal in having that firearm,” Richards said Friday after Rittenhouse was cleared of the remaining charges.
941.28 …” That section of law isn’t specific to minors, but rather forbids any person from having a short-barreled shotgun or rifle. The subsection that defense attorneys relied upon to seek dismissal reads: “This section applies only to a person under 18 years of age who possesses or is armed with a rifle or a shotgun if the person is in violation of s. The current wording of the overarching law seems clear: “Any person under 18 years of age who possesses or goes armed with a dangerous weapon is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor.” A lead-in paragraph defines dangerous weapon as several things, including “any firearm, loaded or unloaded.” “(The charge) should have been dismissed earlier.” “There doesn’t seem to be much ambiguity here,” he said. To Kenosha-based defense attorney Michael Cicchini, the statute clearly requires a weapon to be short-barreled to apply, and the judge made the right call. But when he acknowledged that Rittenhouse’s rifle’s barrel was longer than 16 inches, the minimum barrel length allowed under state law, Schroeder dismissed the charge. Rittenhouse attorneys Mark Richards and Corey Chirafsi pointed to an exception in the law that they said allows minors to possess shotguns and rifles as long as they’re not short-barreled.Īssistant District Attorney James Kraus argued that the exception renders the state’s prohibition on minors possessing dangerous weapons meaningless. Hours before closing arguments began on Monday, Judge Bruce Schroeder granted a defense motion to toss out the weapons charge. Though the charge was only a misdemeanor - punishable by a maximum nine months in jail - it might have offered the jury a way to convict Rittenhouse of a lesser crime if they were persuaded by his self-defense claims but agreed with prosecutors that he made a poor decision to carry a rifle on the streets of Kenosha. WATCH: Analysis of the Rittenhouse verdict Rittenhouse was 17 at the time, and there was no dispute that he was armed the night of the shootings with a Smith and Wesson AR-style semiautomatic rifle strapped to his chest.
That jury never got to consider the gun possession charge - one that at one time had seemed a slam-dunk for the prosecution. A jury deliberated about 3 1/2 days before finding Rittenhouse not guilty on Friday of five felony charges, including a murder charge that could have carried a life in prison sentence. Rittenhouse shot three men, killing two of them, with an AR-15-style rifle during a chaotic protest against police brutality in Kenosha last year.
#Facebook cover photo gun meme trial#
(AP) - Prosecutors in Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial may have lost their best chance at convicting the Illinois man of something when the judge threw out a charge that Rittenhouse was a minor in possession of a dangerous weapon.
0 kommentar(er)
