You made a mistake there. The word should be "reasonable" force.
Rittenhouse's optics problem is that he joined a vigilante group which decided that they were going to arm, travel to Kenosha - where they had no real connection, I am guessing - and play at being soldiers with real guns. I am quite sure that the organizers had political views far to the right of anything acceptable in Canada and that their whole point of doing this gig was attracting followers. I have no liking for far right vigilante groups. I would be shocked if you have either.
Most of those fat, dumb fucks would have put on their body armour and sat around near the cops that night, showing off their $10,000 rifle bling to their new buddies. And driven home the next morning to make up stories about their exploits to the other dumb, rightie guys.
Enter Rittenhouse, who is 16 years old, dumb as a turnip and who apparently has no idea that you don't wander off alone into an extremely hostile crowd, some of whom have guns and most of whom may want to hurt you. He really shouldn't have been in that situation and he really should have stayed home. And for fuck's sake! - What the fuck was his mother even thinking to let him do this?!?!?!?!
When I was a kid, moms wouldn't even let kids go biking to the mall alone.
And actually the little fucker had decent enough close combat skills for an idiot. And shot his way out of trouble. And I'm pretty sure that the jury is going to buy that as well. The video evidence is pretty supportive.
The rightie, play-soldier assholes who organized this fiasco got a million times more free press than they could ever in their wildest dreams have wished. And I hope to fuck that doesn't include other CHILDREN carrying around rifles in riot situations in future - but it probably will!
As far as Rittenhouse is concerned, I can only hope he gets as far from this shit as he possibly can and gets his grade 12 and moves away somewhere people don't know him. Because being exploited as a hero and symbol for something you did in 5 minutes when you were 16 and which involved blowing apart 3 other people is not going to be good for the rest of his life.