On November 19, 2021, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of homicide charges stemming from his killing of two people—Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum—at a protest of police violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rittenhouse had armed himself and traveled to the protest, purportedly to defend Kenoshans’ property against looting. The acquittal sparked substantial public outrage about the state of gun laws and about the legitimacy of the criminal justice system more generally. In a similar case, Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Bryan were charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia.2 There, the defendants claimed to have suspected that Arbery was engaged in criminal activity and pursued him with a gun. When Arbery took action to protect himself, Travis McMichael shot and killed him. Here too, many were concerned that an acquittal would lead to greater vigilantism. And while the jury ultimately convicted, Georgia law would have also allowed acquittal in a similar or even identical case. The public discourse in these cases has tended to focus on the factual circumstances of these individual actors: defendants and victims. As a consequence, such cases have raised public concern that certain states’ gun-use and self-defense laws effectively invite malicious individuals—including vigilantes and white supremacists—to kill with impunity.