Hi Jason, I appreciate your comments and respect your views. This short, 1000 word article wasn’t meant to address the issue of how to handle the problem merely to expose a problem that exists, and as I see it.

Many smarter minds than both of us are going to be needed to address the problem. Your name indicates a Chinese ethnicity and I’m lucky enough to live in China; there are no gun deaths here — I mean literally none, the hasn’t been one for many years. Imagine that for a moment, a country of 1.4 billion people hasn’t had a gun death for many years .

Are you aware there are more rapes and murders in the State of Baltimore, than there are in the entire country of China, a similar sized country, with three times the population?

As for the video, indeed, I agree with you 100%. What I saw, I assume was the same video, and it absolutely looked like he was defending himself. However, the video is a short, out of context view of a couple of minutes, in the video I saw, he shot one person in the arm and one in the chest, it looked to me like one was holding a firearm and the other was ablout to attack him with a skateboard — do you know why those two men were approaching him with such malice intent, or what happened in the moments before the recording started? I don’t. His apparent self-defence from those two assailants is without a doubt going to be considered by a jury who have a lot more information than you and I have from viewing it.

Why, for example did a 17 year old boy, take a gun from his home and travel 30 miles? Was his intention to harm someone? You and I don’t know him, we don’t know his intention and we don’t know his reasons or mental capacity, this is why it’s impossible for us to state that “acquital is the only conscionable outcome”. It’s also the reason why I have stated that the USA is on a knife edge as a result of this.

You think, for very valid reasons, that this boy must be acquited or his, and of course your own, constitutional rights will have been eroded, while the people you describe as “crazie lefties” will vehemently disagree with you. The vehemence of both of your arguments and the very strong opinions both sides of the argument hold, each for their own equally valid reasons, is the very subject of this article. The USA appears, to the outside observer, to be a society torn apart by politics with the people you describe as “crazy lefties” destroying property and people such as youself, and obviously, Kyle Rittenholuser, feeling a need to assert their rights of self defence.

You asked me the question: what should citizens do? Any answer I give you would be wrong no matter what it is, because, not being a US citizen, I don’t have the right, or even the responsibility to answer it. Your question needs to be directed at the authorities you elect to govern and the the institutions they implement to protect you. If they aren’t doing enough, what should you do?

I don’t know as I’m fortunate enough to live in a society where the question of life or death as a result of a political disagreement isn’t ever raised. What I do know is that the world is waiting and watching to see what people like yourself might do. Don’t let them down!