In his first interview since his arrest, Kyle Rittenhouse told The Washington Post that he used government stimulus funds to pay for the gun that he later used to kill two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this summer. “I got my $1,200 from the coronavirus Illinois unemployment, because I was on furlough from YMCA, and I got my first unemployment check so I was like, ‘Oh I’ll use this to buy it,’” he told the newspaper. Rittenhouse, who is 17 years old, said he paid an adult friend to buy the gun for him since he was underage. “I feel I had to protect myself,” Rittenhouse said. “I would have died that night if I didn’t.” The teenager, who’s been charged with intentional homicide and illegally possessing a gun, told the Post that he didn’t regret having a firearm that night. One of Rittenhouse’s sisters referred to the Kenosha demonstrators as “monsters.”