Kyle Rittenhouse is no hero — he’s a gun-toting, cop-loving product of white privilege who thinks a piece of property matters more than the life of a Black man

The same people who think Kyle Rittenhouse should get a medal for killing two people and wounding another with a semi-automatic rifle at a Wisconsin Black Lives Matter protest think Alec Baldwin should rot in jail for accidentally shooting and killing a woman on a movie set with what he was told was an unloaded gun.

And, even if you make the senseless case that the men Rittenhouse shot were “arsonists,” “rioters,” and “looters” and not victims — as defense attorneys did — none of these alleged crimes carried the death penalty, and certainly no one appointed Rittenhouse as their judge, jury and executioner.

Still, the wave of sympathy being generated for this adolescent assassin is astounding. Equally troubling is the jury’s decision that another self-appointed vigilante should get away with murder.

Maybe the jury bought into the hateful hashtag that started trending on Twitter even before closing arguments were finished at Rittenhouse’s murder trial — #NotGuilty.

Even a sitting member of Congress thinks Rittenhouse, 18, is an altar boy.

“He is not guilty, he deserves a not guilty verdict,” U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, told Newsmax on Wednesday night. “And I sure hope he gets it because you know what? Kyle Rittenhouse would probably make a pretty good congressional intern.”

Not guilty? Rittenhouse is guilty as the proverbial sin, although I’m willing to hear sin’s case on appeal.

Prosecutors said Rittenhouse shot and killed 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum and 26-year-old Anthony Huber and wounded 27-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz with an AR-style semi-automatic rifle last summer during an Aug. 25 protest over the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer.

Rittenhouse, a former police youth cadet, said he went to Kenosha from his home in nearby Antioch, Ill., to protect property from rioters. Rittenhouse’s lawyers say he shot the men in self defense.

Rittenhouse is white, as were his victims. But anyone who thinks this case wasn’t about race is as blind as justice is supposed to be.

What Black man, young or old, could buy a semi-automatic rifle, cross a state line, openly carry the weapon in public and gun down three men without even being arrested or killed on the scene, much less be acquitted of all charges?

A Black man in Kenosha, Wis., or Anywhere, U.S.A., couldn’t even think about doing any of that without getting shot in the back or locked up for life.

You don’t think so? Just ask Jacob Blake, who was shot in the back in front of his children and partially paralyzed by a cop who thought Blake was about to stab him with a knife. The officer faced no criminal charges.

The shooting sparked days of unrest — and calls to protect private property from looters. Rittenhouse said he answered the call.

“Nobody drives into a city with guns because they love someone else’s business that much. That’s some bulls—t,” comedian Trevor Noah said shortly after the shooting. “No one has ever thought, ‘Oh, it’s my solemn duty to pick up a rifle and protect that TJ Maxx.’ They do it because they’re hoping to shoot someone.”

Kyle Rittenhouse is no hero. He’s a gun-toting, cop-loving product of white privilege who thinks a piece of property in another state matters more than the life of a Black man.

Here are some names of people who were really not guilty: Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner and George Floyd.

Their lives mattered. So did the lives of the white men Rittenhouse killed. This jury did some major damage. It did everything but give Rittenhouse a hug and his gun back.