How Many Felons Were In That Kenosha Crowd, Anyway? :: 08/31/2020

Right now, I’m not interested in looking at what transpired with Kyle Rittenhouse and giving it any kind of analysis as to whether he was justified or not. Sure, he looks like he acted in self-defense, but there are potential complications that will likely be sorted out by the courts. He’s got a good legal team, apparently, so we’ll see how that goes.

However, there are a few facts that aren’t really up for debate. They’re hard and fast facts that can’t be disputed, either.

In particular, that Rittenhouse shot precisely three people during the riot last week, killing two and injuring a third and that all three turned out to be convicted felons.

What are the odds of that?

We could break down the math, but I suck at math and I don’t think anyone else wants to do that either. However, the folks at Law Enforcement Today did, and they made some interesting arguments.

While Kyle’s future is dealt with in the courts, it is interesting to look at the number of felons he shot in the context of the crowd size at the scene.

It is difficult to count them because the video is too dark to easily identify when a person appears more than once because they have run into camera range, out, and then back in again.

That said, the number of rioters near Rittenhouse at the two shooting locations, a parking lot and a nearby street, appear to number at least 50. Earlier video showed what appeared to be no less than 100 Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa rioters.

From a statistical point of view, it is interesting that Rittenhouse fired on three people and all three happened to be felons convicted of violent offenses.

Which is more likely, Rittenhouse hit all three felons in the crowd, or three of a larger number of felons?

For anyone who has ever done any research that involved statistics, it is highly improbable that the three felons Rittenhouse shot were the only felons in the crowd.

If they were, it is extremely unlikely he could have purposely shot all three of them while running away from a mob of around 50 people in pursuit if the remainder of the mob were non-felons.

It is also highly unlikely that Rittenhouse could have fired so many bullets into a crowd without hitting a single non-felon, if significant numbers of non-felons had been present.

Right? I mean, if there were 50 people chasing Rittenhouse, and only three were felons, the odds of hitting just those three felons are pretty slim. In fact, the analysis found that after the second shot, the odds dropped to 1 in 48. That’s a smidge over a two percent chance of the third person shot being a felon.

That suggests there were a whole lot more felons in that crowd.

Now, in fairness, there are a couple of factors that need to be understood here. For one, a lot of people who might have been there but didn’t take part in chasing Rittenhouse down were likely non-felons but were, instead, activists who were there for the purpose of protesting or maybe even more mundane forms of rioting, if such a thing.

But the particularly violent behavior–namely chasing down an armed individual, ostensibly to take his firearm–will likely draw more felons that more garden-variety behavior. As such, more felons are likely to be represented in this set than among rioters as a whole.

Of course, felons only make about eight percent of the American population. It would be interesting to see just what percentage of rioters are felons.

Regardless, though, many have called the rioters thugs, and the number of felons present in a mob chasing down an armed kid certain suggests that nomenclature to be quite correct.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. He's also the host of Unloaded TV on YouTube. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/

https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/08/31/felons-kenosha-crowd-anyway/