I think this post does a great job of summing up the issue that has been nagging at me about this event. First off, I am not as well-versed as a lot of folks in this thread on the specifics of the videos and the evidence obtained thus far, and this includes Jon and others who have a great deal of certainty that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. That said, my question is the same as what you raised. What if one or more of the three guys were simply trying to disarm Rittenhouse because they perceived him to be a threat? Sure, the first guy was pursuing him and acting crazy, but he was also unarmed. When Rittenhouse turned and aimed his gun at him, perhaps he tried to get the gun from him to disarm him and eliminate the threat that he perceived, as opposed to wanting to kill him. And when Rittenhouse killed the first guy, the other two guys may have been pursuing him because they thought he had just committed murder and they were trying to apprehend and disarm him before he shot anyone else. I could definitely see that happening. Of course, two of the three guys are dead and can’t offer any insight into their motives, and I thought I heard that the third guy might have made a statement indicating that he was intending to kill Rittenhouse, so perhaps that’s a non-starter. Also, there’s the issue that even if none of the three guys intended to harm Rittenhouse in any way, that doesn’t necessarily rob him of a successful self-defense claim if a reasonable person in Rittenhouse’s shoes would have perceived that deadly force was necessary to protect himself from death or severe bodily injury.