Trump supporters shot out my window. Now they want to make it my fault.

I counted nine holes in the storm window.

That I could count holes, instead of just sweeping shards of glass and wood framing off the floor, suggested an air gun. Maybe even a slingshot. It certainly wasn’t sharpshooter grouping, unless the shooter meant to underline the words on the sign.

But on Nov. 4, someone had slung projectiles against my home, where my kindergartners play, nine times. Why?

“Donald Trump is a vulgar pig.”

That’s what the sign says. That sign has screamed our rage at this President since before he was President, right after Candidate Trump proclaimed on tape that he could “grab them by the pussy . . . do anything.” Our little sign even generated a letter to the Herald-Leader, in about September 2017.

“I would never show such blatant disrespect for the president of our country,” that writer moaned. “This is an example of how low we have become as a society.”

I wonder how that letter writer felt driving by the house last week, and seeing holes underlining our sign in the glass. I wonder if she felt horror at the attack. Or satisfaction. I wonder if she even noticed at all, years later.

The vandalism is my fault. If my kids had been hurt, well, that would have been my fault, too. I know how people can be, and yet I put a sign like that up anyway. Shame on me for not being sufficiently scared.

Why did you make them hit you?

Many moons ago, domestic violence prosecutors taught me to listen for that key rationalization, the victim deserved to be victimized. She just wouldn’t listen. He knew that kind of talk makes me mad. I just can’t control myself when the kids get that loud.

That sign was too politically incorrect, and I knew it. I knew “their” tempers. I knew “their” temperaments. I knew a lot of “them” are armed. I egged “them” on.

You had it coming.

I had it coming. It was my fault for provoking someone who cannot be trusted to be an adult. I put my family in danger because I love my sign more than them. I am to blame for an idiot taking shots at my home.

My first (and second) reaction to that victim blaming was not publishable here. But victim culture kept up its blitz against my already tingling guilt, and fear. And vanity, my pride —maybe I did value speech over safety. Was I being stubborn to put my family at risk over a sign?

And that is how terrorism works. Make ordinary people afraid, then the bullies can take what they want. When they want. No matter what you want.

That is how a Republic dies, afraid of the danger of speaking out.

Is that really what you expect me to teach my kids?

I’ve heard for three years that I’m blowing things out of proportion. I have a derangement syndrome. I am blinded by hatred of a great and generous man who gave up an annual salary and suffered my slings and arrows out of his pure patriotism. All the violence is coming from the Left, from those spoiled children who just need a strong father figure — like the bassinet billionaire, Trump — to put them in their place.

Except I’m not a child. I sure don’t need Donald Trump’s brand of “discipline.” And I’m surely not imagining the nine holes in a window that dared to frame my thoughts, inside my own home.

There is irony in the assault on our “vulgar pig” sign. Trump’s own statements about p**** grabbing cannot be published for vulgarity. Our sign just notes that a vulgar pig spoke. But that was too far for someone to cope with — not the original comment, just recognition of the original comment.

There is a more chilling irony, too. I’ve worked around federal criminal courts for nearly two decades. Those years involved an assortment of mobsters, gangsters, motorcycle riders, sellers, buyers, and a few real-life killers. But no one ever unloaded on my home until the day of a Trump rally, over a sign that left someone, like a pre-schooler, unable to control his or her own behavior.

I’m told I’m to blame for that other person’s lack of self-control, and those nine holes. I’m told I love political speech more than my kids. But I would be no example at all if I taught my kids to be afraid when Trump events bring right-wingers to town.

E.J. Hurst II is a lawyer in Lexington.