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Not a libertarian, more a principled anti-accelerationist and lets-stay-cilvilized-itarian,
I don't think the argument was post hoc, Alex seemed to be quite invested in it, and in hindsight a sincere belief to that effect would seem to explain some of their more idiosyncratic takes.
As for Stand Your Ground laws, the connection is in how "polite liberals" talk about them. There seems to be this presumption that a civilized person must always defer to the uncivilized. They ask questions like would you really shoot a man for attacking you on the street or trying to break into your house? as if it's some sort of got-cha and then are scandalized responds in the affirmative.
It's almost as if they don't see violent schizophrenics attacking people on the train, or rioters burning a neighborhood, as a problem to be solved because that's just what those sorts of people do. See Mayor Rawling-Blake's infamous line about giving people room. As Heath Ledger's Joker would say. "it's all part of the plan" and people will go along with a plan even when it's horrible because it makes them feel in control. I think this certain people seem to have such a visceral reaction to Stand Your Ground Laws and figures like Kyle Rittenhouse, while simultaneously extending infinite charity to figures like Decarlos Brown.
Doesn't this make some sense as a countersignaling performance of elite strength and nonchalance (what used to be called sprezzatura)? Realistically, the average PMC person faces little direct risk from random crime or violence, and less risk the wealthier/ better-connected they are. Simultaneously, the average middle-class person has lots to potentially gain from appearing impressively high-status, secure and confident to their PMC peers, including by showing that they don't need to fear the underclass, don't worry about job competition from foreign workers, etc.
Kyle Rittenhouse feels more cringe than anything else, and for middle-class status purposes it's often worse to be cringe than to be wrong.
Edit: to the original question about Alex, I think Chesterton points out that sometimes when people preach toleration and mercy, they actually just don't disapprove of the action in question. It's a shame you're no longer friends, because I'd be curious to learn whether they would endorse punishment for actions that are unsympathetically gauche rather than just immoral in a plebe way. (I'm not sure what would feel genuinely "gauche" for a well-pedigreed law student who's also a former edgelord/troll, but perhaps you can imagine something? Perhaps if a white, female fellow-student from Alabama, failing some key classes, were caught trying to bargain for grades by faking a rape accusation against a well-regarded male African-American professor - would Alex argue that she should not be expelled? That the professor shouldn't be able sue her for damages?)
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The correct answer to that question is "no, I wouldn't shoot a man for attacking you or breaking into your house; we don't owe you masculinity".
Feels? No, is. Those supporting rioters burning neighborhoods do that specifically because those rioters will never get close to theirs, and as such permitting and encouraging rioters is how they exercise control over everyone else. They're shock troopers, backed up by the rest of the army that is the judiciary, to perpetrate random violence on the rest of the citizenry because it's funny.
Just because the cruel king is now "a significant portion of the citizenry in general" and not "one man or a few men" as it was in times of old doesn't make them less of a cruel king, and even a king like that has supporters simply by virtue of being the king.
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