Kyle Rittenhouse abruptly departed the stage during an appearance at the University of Memphis on Wednesday, after he was confronted about comments made by Turning Point USA founder and president Charlie Kirk.
Rittenhouse was invited by the college’s Turning Point USA chapter to speak at the campus. However, the event was met with backlash from a number of students who objected to Rittenhouse’s presence.
The 21-year-old gained notoriety in August 2020 when, at the age of 17, he shot and killed two men—Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, as well as injuring 26-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz—at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
He said the three shootings, carried out with a semi-automatic AR-15-style firearm, were in self-defense. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest where the shootings took place was held after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was left paralyzed from the waist down after he was shot by a white police officer.
This isn’t normalisation, it’s celebration.
I’m not going to be coy about why they’re celebrating him either: The pro-gun community spends hour after hour theorycrafting about how they can shoot people with their cool guns and get away with it. Kyle is being celebrated for finding a new “get out of jail free” technique that specifically targeted undesirables for murder.
That’s all there is to it. They shower him with fame and money because he killed BLM protesters with America’s favourite gun. It’s his reward.
To me the nightmare is going to happen when we see more doxing with open carry. Imagine a situation where there will be apps listing the people to be targeted, people follow them around with guns, and the moment they react to the threat they get murdered under stand your ground. All perfectly legal.