The odd implication here, in the text quoted below, is that merely being openly armed amounts to an act which somehow justifies people attacking him.

Which is odd, because I have recently read that 'many' of the rioters there were armed, whether or not they were openly carrying a gun.

So, far more likely is that the rioters recognized that this guy WASN'T likely to be sympathetic to the rioters. Realizing that, the fact that Rittenhouse was openly armed was simply used as a justification to attack a person they concluded was an ideological enemy.

On Sun, Nov 14, 2021 at 10:10 PM, professor rat

<pro2rat@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

Huber had turned 26 just four days earlier, according to an obituary.

Huber spotted the armed man in the crowded street and he ran toward danger, his girlfriend, Hannah Gittings, told CNN in an interview last year.

"He pushed me out of the way and ran off. I tried to grab him," Hannah Gittings said. She referred to what Huber had done as a "heroic thing."

Videos from the scene show Rittenhouse carrying an AR-15-style rifle, walking the city's streets with a group of armed men. Gittings told CNN her boyfriend launched at the armed individual to protect her and other people nearby.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/01/us/kyle-rittenhouse-shooting-victims-trial/index.html