Gun store hires the acquitted Kenosha shooter, and the owner touts his new employee on a podcast.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: September 1, 2026
Host: A Sarasota gun store has hired Kyle Rittenhouse, and Will Meade, the owner of Shark Coast Tactical, proceeded to tout his new employee on a podcast. We bring you the details.
Johannes Werner: Rittenhouse became nationally known after being acquitted in the 2020 Kenosha shootings. At age 17, he took an AR-15 style rifle to protect businesses in Kenosha, the city halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago that was seeing protests and riots following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. He ended up shooting three people, two of them fatally.
The reaction to the Kyle Rittenhouse shooting and acquittal by a jury in Kenosha split the nation in two. Pro-gun activists elevated him to hero status; he appeared on Tucker Carlson and visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
And now, he is moving from Texas to Sarasota.
Kyle Rittenhouse
Kyle Rittenhouse: I knew I wanted to come here. I started looking for a job and building a plan, and I said, “Well, I’m not going to rush into a decision. We’ll take our time, and God will put it into our hands when it happens.” I saw you guys had an opening, and I was like, “Hm. Let’s apply for .. and giggles and see,” because I really wasn’t expecting an answer because other places I have applied were like, “Yeah, right. You’re not Kyle Rittenhouse.” And I was like, “Okay. Cool. Bye. Have a nice day.” But you gave me the time of day. You treated me like an actual employee. We had an interview, and we sat down and talked, and I respected that.
JW: This actually isn’t his first job at a Florida gun store. In 2015, he briefly worked at a gun store in Milton, in northwest Florida, that closed shortly after he was hired.
In the wide-ranging, two-hour interview on the Shark Coast Tactical Podcast, Rittenhouse partly blamed the closure on restrictive gun laws.
He also introduced his Jehova’s Witness-raised wife and his service dog—which listens to commands in German—in the podcast.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s dog
Rittenhouse said he had no friends in Texas. He complained about people using him—including one of his lawyers. He talked about how he stopped hiring what he called handlers, and about an ongoing FBI investigation and litigation against a manager who he says stole $1 million from him.
KR: Every single person that comes into my life wants to take advantage of me.
Will Meade: I don’t take advantage of you.
KR: No, but [everyone] that wants to work for me or do things for me wants to take advantage of me. They want to see, “How can I profit off of you as most as possible?”
WM: Well, that’s what a manager does. They profit off of your success by helping you be more successful.
KR: But they don’t want to do things that make me successful. They want to do things that make me look stupid and then take a majority of the money.
JW: He also praised the late Charlie Kirk, describing him as the first person who gave him a large platform right after his acquittal. He said there have been attempts against his life, and he shared why he was not scared of talking in front of 20,000 people at Turning Point events.
KR: I do threat assessment the entire time I’m speaking, and it distracts me from the people. I’m looking for threats the entire time I’m speaking.
WM: How did you learn threat assessment?
KR: My security team.
JW: He went on to describe in detail his version of the events in Kenosha six years ago. He said reporters were paid to stir up things and that George Soros funded the unrest. He participated in a joke about “we know who owns the banks.” He expressed how he resents being called a white supremacist and Nazi.
He elaborated on the importance of his belief in Jesus and prayer during 87 days in jail and how prayer led him to Florida.
KR: It was always when I was praying at night in jail: “Lord, whatever happens, let it be your mission. Let it be your plan,” because, no matter what, it was okay. If I was to be convicted, that’s okay because I knew what I did wasn’t the wrong thing. Yeah, it would have sucked to spend the rest of my life in prison, but I knew Jesus, and that is the only freedom you know—that’s the only true freedom. You are not truly free until you’re free with the Lord. These are the good things that are coming. I’m doing this, but this is a really good thing. This is a good thing, us moving to Florida. This is something that we’ve prayed for and we’ve wanted, and He answered our prayers for it.
Will Meade
WM: Okay.
KR: Yeah. So—
WM: “I just need you to sell guns.”
KR: That’s exactly what I do every day.
WM: “I need you to sell guns. I need your wife to help, too.”
JW: He said that he had wanted to return to Florida for years. He also told listeners about a history of vacationing in the Sarasota area as a child.
Asked about his family, he said he wished he had been raised by his grandmother. He described his father as a “raging drug addict” and said he cut ties with his mother, who lives in Florida with two daughters.
KR: They actually live in Florida. They live a couple hours from here.
WM: And you mean “they,” like—family is mom, dad, brother and sister?
KR: My two sisters and my mom. They live somewhere in Florida.
WM: But you don’t have a good relationship with your mother?
KR: No. Not at all. I don’t have a good relationship with my mother. I don’t have a good relationship with my older sister. She’s a huge liberal. We talk occasionally.
JW: Here’s how he described his aspirations:
Bella Nelson Rittenhouse and Kyle Rittenhouse
KR: I’m going to try to serve other people at work, serve my wife at home and do good, Biblical things while practicing the word and going to church, trying to be a good Christian. One of those things is getting married. God wants you to get married. He wants you to be fruitful and have a lot of kids.
WM: He does.
KR: So we got married, and now we’re going to have a lot of kids.
JW: For WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6pm.