Online pro-gun extremism: 'Cool for active shooter stuff'

[Guno צְבִי]

The young man in the jeans and sunglasses proudly shows off his gun in the YouTube video, then instructs his 1 million subscribers how to fit an extra clip in his gun belt, and offers a chilling observation.

“Pretty cool for active shooter stuff, if you need extra mags.”

It’s a typical video, one of thousands teaching military-style training and tactics to civilian gun owners, offering instructions on silencers and grenade launchers, on shooting from vehicles or into buildings. Other websites sell "ghost gun" kits, gas masks and body armor.

“You shouldn’t be scared of the NRA. You should be scared of us,” one online ghost gun dealer tweeted last week.

It’s an ecosystem rich with potential recruits for extremist groups exploiting the often blurry line separating traditional support for a constitutional right from militant antigovernment movements that champion racism and violence.

White supremacists have carried out most of the deadliest attacks on U.S. soil in the last five years, including a 2018 shooting inside a Pittsburgh synagogue and a 2019 rampage in which a gunman targeting Latinos inside a Texas Walmart killed 23 people.

The gunman who perpetrated last month’s rampage in Buffalo, N.Y., for example, claimed in a rambling racist diatribe that he was radicalized when pandemic boredom led him to far-right social media groups and tactical training videos he found online.

One of the companies specifically cited by the gunman sells firearm accessories and operates popular social media channels boasting hundreds of training videos. The videos cover topics like shooting from cars, assaulting a building, using gas masks while shooting, and night vision goggles.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/o...AAY58uB?cvid=de11ed28aa744c7a8c2d2978781f293b

 

[Truck Fump / h1b]

The young man in the jeans and sunglasses proudly shows off his gun in the YouTube video, then instructs his 1 million subscribers how to fit an extra clip in his gun belt, and offers a chilling observation.

“Pretty cool for active shooter stuff, if you need extra mags.”

It’s a typical video, one of thousands teaching military-style training and tactics to civilian gun owners, offering instructions on silencers and grenade launchers, on shooting from vehicles or into buildings. Other websites sell "ghost gun" kits, gas masks and body armor.

“You shouldn’t be scared of the NRA. You should be scared of us,” one online ghost gun dealer tweeted last week.

It’s an ecosystem rich with potential recruits for extremist groups exploiting the often blurry line separating traditional support for a constitutional right from militant antigovernment movements that champion racism and violence.

White supremacists have carried out most of the deadliest attacks on U.S. soil in the last five years, including a 2018 shooting inside a Pittsburgh synagogue and a 2019 rampage in which a gunman targeting Latinos inside a Texas Walmart killed 23 people.

The gunman who perpetrated last month’s rampage in Buffalo, N.Y., for example, claimed in a rambling racist diatribe that he was radicalized when pandemic boredom led him to far-right social media groups and tactical training videos he found online.

One of the companies specifically cited by the gunman sells firearm accessories and operates popular social media channels boasting hundreds of training videos. The videos cover topics like shooting from cars, assaulting a building, using gas masks while shooting, and night vision goggles.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/o...AAY58uB?cvid=de11ed28aa744c7a8c2d2978781f293b

mmmmmmm.

seems like fake news.

 

[Guno צְבִי]

Federal authorities have also taken notice, increasing funding for investigations into domestic terrorism, a challenge that FBI Director Christopher Wray last year described as “metastasizing.” But there's little law enforcement can do but monitor as extremists use the threat of gun control to recruit new members.

“The message quickly becomes ‘the government is coming to take your guns and leave you undefended,’” Hood said. That’s despite the obvious political challenges that even modest attempts at gun control face in the U.S. Despite a long and growing list of mass shootings, gun rights have not been restricted in any significant way in the U.S. in decades.

 

[Guno צְבִי]

Gun manufacturers and industry groups like the National Rifle Assn. bear some responsibility for unfounded conspiracy theories about federal plots to seize American’s guns, according to Braddock.

“What’s the first rule in salesmanship? It’s to create the need for the item. We think about guns as something different — and they are because they’re instruments of violence — but they’re also commodities sold in huge quantities,” Braddock said. “They’re creating the illusion of need.”

Contacted by the Associated Press, one website selling ghost gun kits responded with a statement saying “all questions" about regulating firearms amount to “naked attempts to disarm traditional Americans, weaponize the government against them, and subject them to the ignorant and vicious tools of federal power.”

Although some of the creators of tactical training videos posted on platforms like YouTube say their intended audience is law enforcement, others say their subscriber base is mostly those looking to arm themselves against the government.