> Taking the law into your own hands just breeds more violence.

As a nice but nerdy kid who got in trouble at school for half a decade or while teachers turned a blind eye I'm not so sure.

The problems immediately stopped once I stood up and used necessary force to make me a less attractive target. Even the bully in question seemed to get something valuable out of it.

Edited to remove as many personal details as possible while keeping the story intact.

I'm going to assume you didn't kill anybody. I've lived through that exact same thing, but I definitely wouldn't have shot people or endangered their lives. That's beyond insane.

He brought first aid for the protestors, was cleaning up graffiti and also was ready to defend himself with a weapon if he needed.

If someone attacked a medic openly carrying a gun and the medic defend themselves against several assailants, do you blame the medic?

Actually "two wrongs" is exactly how enforcement of the law works. Party A breaks into house, so Party B assaults and kidnaps them. Ideally, Party B is operating according to due process (including duly enacted "laws"), thus is approved of by wider society and the situation converges. It's not a given that Party B can only be some government-blessed police, because such police cannot be everywhere and police (or even wider society) can be corrupt (eg gun control laws gained stream after Black communities started arming themselves in self defense).

As a libertarian who is generally sympathetic to arguments from both tribes, I have to say that the red tribe arguments here seem quite sensible and applicable (which frankly is a relief to me because most everything else I've seen from the red tribe over the past two years has seemed batshit insane and I was worried that I had been captured by the political machine)

If Grosskreutz had ended up killing Rittenhouse, it's certainly possible that the legal finding would have also been self defense (with Rittenhouse not being prosecuted posthumously). In general the law doesn't have clear answers for chaotic situations, and the best way to protect yourself is to avoid them in the first place.

Which brings us back to the larger issue - if Rittenhouse's behavior was problematic for electing to become an armed combatant or force escalation at a riot or something like that, then it seems that is what needs to be criminalized directly - regardless of the specific armed confrontations precipitated. Of course any such law would have to distinguish between bona fide community defense by residents standing their collective ground.