We haven’t heard much from Kyle Rittenhouse since he was exonerated in his self-defense case. The Democrats tried to make an example of him, and he more than survived the process. Rittenhouse has a book with his name on it. He has 1.2 million followers on X, and I expect he’s doing a lot more than we see or hear about, but if you lurk in the shadow of the news cycle, he’s been absent until this week when he said he wasn’t voting for Donald Trump.
“Unfortunately, Donald Trump had bad advisors making him bad on the Second Amendment, and that is my issue,” he argued. “If you cannot be completely uncompromisable on the Second Amendment, I will not vote for you, and I will write somebody else in.”
Roughly 14 hours and a MAGA social-media brow-beating later, Kyle had a change of heart.
[A]fter the February 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, Trump said his administration would “work on getting the age [of commercial gun sales] up to 21 instead of 18.” He also suggested that he might support the significant expansion of federal background check laws, including so-called universal background checks. Such policies, if pursued, would likely infringe on the rights of law-abiding Americans without meaningfully preventing gun violence.
The infamous bump-stock ban, later tossed out by the Courts, still sticks in a few craws, but Trump has otherwise been better to excellent when it comes to defending the right to self-defense. Threatened vetos stopped multiple expanded background check bills in his first term, and he publicly opposed gun-free zones. Mr. Trump also rescinded Obama-era orders that would have encumbered seniors’ rights and the 3D printing of firearms. And we cannot dismiss his judicial appointments up and down the Federal Court food chain. They have and will prove invaluable assets in the legal battles (at least while these judges remain untainted by the bureaucracy).
And, short of relitigating the rest of his record, which is mostly positive, Donald Trump appears willing and able to learn from his mistakes. As for Kyle Rittenhouse, I think he may have caved too soon, and I get it. Even Catturd was giving him crap and a high-profile flogging can wear almost anyone down. But as Billy Binion observes at Reason.com, “No one is entitled to your vote. They’re not entitled to it simply because they’re a member of a particular political party, and they’re not entitled to it for supposedly being less bad than the other side. And they’re certainly not entitled to it just because they said supportive things about you in a time of need.”
We cannot disagree.
