I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, November 22nd.

One of the things that happened on Friday when Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted in Wisconsin

was that some supporters of the verdict

outside the courthouse started chanting Second Amendment. The BBC reports that others driving by

honk their car horns in support and leaned out their car windows shouting, we love the Second Amendment.

The New Yorker says one guy attending a pro-written House rally outside the

courthouse during the trial wore a pro-second amendment hoodie. So for some people,

Rittenhouse was not a vigilante or a 17-year-old kid who got in over his head, but a symbol of the

right to bear arms to defend yourself when the police aren't enough. Of course, in this case,

Rittenhouse didn't start out as a person who was being physically attacked. He was a kid who

answered the call of a local militia to go armed with an assault rifle in public to a city

he didn't live in and protect other people's property. Yes, stores in government buildings were

being damaged in Kenosha,

but only Kyle Rittenhouse killed another human being. Only Kyle Rittenhouse, as a member of a

non-law enforcement militia, used deadly force against other people. And he's now being hailed

as a hero of the Second Amendment. Congressman Matt

Gates, as we mentioned in the previous segment, said he wants to offer the kid an internship.

Congressman Paul Gosar, who released that animation of himself killing AOC and going after Biden,

released a poll asking if Rittenhouse should receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Shortly after Rittenhouse's arrest last year, his own legal team called him a minute man

and a member of a militia, NBC News reported that. Shortly after the verdict on Friday,

Alex Kaplan from the Liberal Media Watchdog Group Media Matters,

...