It Depends

I just looked it up.  Open carry is legal in Michigan but not in Illinois.  In Wisconsin it's legal except in certain places where it's prohibited, my source didn't specify which places.  In Illinois, a gun must be unloaded and enclosed in a case or disassembled to render it incapable of firing except when lawfully hunting or target shooting.  In Michigan you need a permit to carry a concealed weapon, but not to carry one out in the open as long as you don't  "brandish" it.  Last I heard, they were still arguing about the legal definition of the word "brandish".  Furthermore, if your gun is creating a disturbance in a public place, that's "disturbing the peace", which is a separate law.  I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to threaten somebody with a firearm in all states, but then we must legally define the word "threaten".  Generally, the legal question is whether a "reasonable and prudent person" would feel threatened.  Personally, I feel that no reasonable and prudent person would even attend one of those protests, but I'm not a lawyer. 

This Kenosha case raises a couple other interesting legal questions as well.  Wisconsin law prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from possessing a firearm, and Mr. Rittenhouse was 17 at the time of the incident.  I understand that his lawyer is claiming that law to be unconstitutional because militia members in the 18th Century were often younger than 18.  This leads us to the militia issue.  Mr. Rittenhouse claims to be a member of some kind of militia, maybe we should call that a "self styled militia" because the official militia in the US has been the National Guard for a long time.  We have been hearing about these unofficial militias for some time, and I'm surprised that nobody has forced a legal ruling on that.  Maybe this time.

The problem I'm trying to address with my secession proposal is the police brutality that has been in the news lately.  All the cases I have heard of have involved city police.  If the ghetto people had their own city and their own police force the only people they could protest against would be each other.  There is nothing unusual about suburbs or even enclaves within a city being autonomous in municipal matters.  What is unusual is taking existing city territory and detaching it to form a separate jurisdiction.  I don't know if that's ever been done, but it seems like it could be.  If land can be annexed by a city, why can't it be detached from a city?