![]() “Elected officials and media personalities should really be denouncing political violence, not embracing it,” Piggott said. The embrace and lauding of someone like Rittenhouse is dangerous, said Stephen Piggott, a researcher at Western States Center who focuses on white nationalist, paramilitary and anti-democracy groups. The now 20-year-old Rittenhouse, who told the crowd in Idaho that the government was seeking to “take our guns” and “take the rest of our freedoms”, has become a darling of the far right since the shooting, appearing on Fox News and other rightwing media. He was found not guilty of homicide in November 2021. In a speech to the Bonneville county Republicans, Rittenhouse complained that he faces “ridicule on a daily basis” since he killed Rosenbaum and Huber. Rittenhouse joined other armed men acting as a self-described militia and roamed the city, before killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, 27. ![]() Black Lives Matter protests had been taking place in the city after Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, was shot seven times in the back by a white police officer, leaving Blake partially paralyzed. Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, from his home in Illinois, armed with an assault-style rifle, in August 2020. The event, amid a prolonged spate of mass shootings – many conducted with AR-15s – suggests a further embrace by Republicans of the most extreme elements of the gun lobby in the US, despite polls showing a majority of Americans, across party affiliation, supporting some gun control laws.
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