Student handcuffed for carrying a bag of Doritos

"Baltimore cops swarmed and handcuffed a high school student after an artificial intelligence tool mistook his bag of Doritos for a weapon.

Taki Allen, 16, was hanging out with his friends after football practice at Kenwood High School Monday night when all of a sudden, armed officers approached him.

"It was like eight cop cars that came pulling up for us. At first, I didn't know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, 'Get on the ground,' and I was like, 'What?'" Allen told local outlet WBAL-TV.

The student described the moment he was handcuffed by police: "They made me get on my knees, put my hands behind my back, and cuffed me. Then, they searched me and they figured out I had nothing.”

Allen said police then found the bag of Doritos he had been eating shortly before."

The story continues at The Independent.  How difficult is it to be a high school student nowadays?  This is a generation that has gone through mandatory shooter response drills since their childhood.  Now AI is deciding whether they are suspected of being a criminal, and the responders come with guns drawn.  FWIW any childhood stress in my era from nuclear war drills pales in comparison.

re the Madison school shooter

This morning several people have contacted me on this subject, so I'll just briefly mention that my family and friends have not been directly affected (it occurred in a different suburb).

This Reddit thread is the source of the embedded photo (cropped for size) and has more info than the local news stations (which don't release details until they are properly verified).  That post indicates "Aug 2024, age 14. This picture is the last Facebook post from her dad."

This other link also has (unverified) information about her "manifesto" and this photo.  TL:DR - a dysfunctional family + bullying at school.

I'll take this post down later after more reliable information is available online.

Addendum:  I probably don't need to repost The Onion's boilerplate:

MADISON, WI—In the hours following a violent rampage in Wisconsin in which a lone attacker killed at least two individuals and injured six others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Monday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Maryland resident Jonathan Pallard, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Addendum:  for additional detailed information and investigation, see the link in the December 18 comment by an anonymous reader.

Addendum:  she could be a poster child for a dysfunctional family:

"Rupnow’s parents married initially in 2011, about two years after her birth. They divorced for the first time in 2014, agreeing that they would have joint custody but that Rupnow would live mostly with her mother.

They married again in 2017 and divorced in 2020, agreeing this time for a more even split in custody. She would be at her father’s for two days, then with her mother for two days, then with her father for three days, before doing the opposite the next week.

It wasn’t long before her parents remarried yet again. In April 2021, they were going through a third divorce. They were “admonished concerning remarriage,” court records state.

In July 2022, they agreed on shared custody but that Rupnow would spend most of her time with her father. She was now in therapy, intended to help decide where she would spend her weekends..."

Man shoots and kills people to protest lax gun laws

"A man who killed five people and injured eight at a Louisville bank in April was motivated by outrage over gun laws he considered lax, and a hope that his rampage would highlight the ease with which he acquired an AR-15 and spur politicians into action on the issue, according to the shooter’s personal writings revealed in a police report Tuesday."

More information at the Washington Post.

"No way to prevent this..."

I honestly hate to recurrently cite The Onion on this topic, but it continues to be true.  Today's other stories include Exhausted Doctors Pronounce Patient Dead Enough,  The Onion Stands With Israel Because It Seems You Get In Less Trouble With That, and Florida Students Locked In Decontamination Room After Exposure To Book.

It's so sad that nothing can be done about this

NASHVILLE, TN—In the hours following a violent rampage in Tennessee in which a lone attacker killed at least six individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Tennessee resident Laura Campbell, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Text from The Onion, photo via the pics subreddit (credit Nicole Hester / USA Today Network / Reuters).  The victims include not just the traumatized survivor depicted above, but indirectly all the other schoolchildren in the United States, who undergo "active shooter drills" to learn how to avoid the people who want to kill them in school with AR15s that will vaporize their facial features to such an extent that their identity can only be recognized by having them wear distinctive green Converse sneakers.  Fuck all the people who enable these tragedies, and the horses they rode in on.

This post is closed to comments because after all there is nothing that can possibly be done.

The symbolism of green Converse sneakers

As a synecdoche for the tragedy of our historical moment, consider a news item about the murder of nineteen schoolchildren in Uvalde, Texas. One victim, ten-year-old Maite Rodriguez, was identifiable only by the green Converse sneakers she wore. She had drawn a heart on her right shoe. After the actor Matthew McConaughey, for some reason delivering a press briefing at the White House, made this detail known to the public, the shoes sold out as appalled consumers ordered them online.

It is impossible to understand a society whose response to the slaughter of children is to purchase green Converse sneakers as anything other than psychotic. It is impossible, I believe, to wish for such a society to continue—a society that is also bent on murdering as many other forms of life as possible, driving entire species extinct, rendering the planet uninhabitable. 

Excerpted from Apocalypse Nowish in the December 2022 issue of Harper's.  Embedded image via NPR.

The Onion reminds us

42 mass shootings so far this year.  And January isn't even over yet.

Magnet fishing

As reported by the StarTribune:

Long before next week's fishing opener, a few Minnesota anglers were avidly casting lines into the water and hauling in hefty catches.  But they weren't hooking walleye, bass or northern pike. They were hoping to reel in an antique metal sign, a safe full of money, maybe even a gun.

It's part of a new, and admittedly niche, sport of magnet fishing, where you "fish" with a super-powerful magnet tied to a strong line.  Most of the time, magnet fishers pull in mundane scrap metal: old nails and bolts, a length of rebar, fish hooks, beer bottle caps...

Even if it's just scrap metal, local magnet fishers don't catch and release, but rather dispose or recycle their finds and consider themselves to be helping the environment by hauling hundreds of pounds of metal out of local rivers and lakes...

The hobby is also growing in parts of Europe, where there's a lot of metal in canals and other bodies of water thanks to centuries of warfare.

"England is very, very big for magnet fishing," Shoemaker said.

More information at the link.  I've wanted to do something like this ever since I was a kid in a boat spotting lost lures at the bottom of a lake.

Reposted from last year to add this display of magnet fishing catches:

In the discussion thread, the OP reports that he submits all the retrieved firearms for local police to evaluate, and that he has helped solve four cold cases.  Lives in Georgia.

Data on "mass stabbings" in the U.K. and U.S.

Data assembled in response to Marjorie Taylor Greene's* assertion to a U.K. reporter that while the U.S. has mass shootings, “You have mass stabbings, lady.”  Note the chart numbers are adjusted for population size as incidents per million residents.  More info and analysis at The Washington Post.

Remember when the U.S. cracked down on mass shootings?

I had forgotten.  An article in the Washington Post reminded me -

They were the mass shooters of their day, and all of America knew their names: John “the Killer” Dillinger, Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, George “Machine Gun” Kelly.

In the 1930s, the violence by the notorious gangsters was fueled by Thompson submachine guns, or Tommy guns, that fired up to 600 rounds in a minute. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was pressing Congress to act on his “New Deal for Crime,” specifically a bill officially called the National Firearms Act of 1934. Informally, it was known as the “Anti-Machine Gun Bill.”..

By 1934, more than two dozen states passed gun-control laws. West Virginia required gun owners to be bonded and licensed. Michigan mandated that the police approve gun buyers. Texas banned machine guns...

“A machine gun, of course, ought never to be in the hands of any private individual,” Attorney General Homer Cummings said at a House hearing. “There is not the slightest excuse for it, not the least in the world, and we must, if we are going to be successful in this effort to suppress crime in America, take these machine guns out of the hands of the criminal class.”..

The NRA gave qualified support to the proposed law...

The NRA and groups representing hunters opposed extending the tax to pistols and revolvers. “It is a fact which cannot be refuted that a pistol or revolver in the hands of a man or woman who knows how to use it is one thing which makes the smallest man or the weakest woman the equal of the burliest thug,” argued Milton Reckord, the NRA’s executive vice president. But as for a bill limited to machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, he said, “We will go along with such a bill as that.”

The embedded image is a screencap from an anguished video at this tweet (with a hat tip to reader Lyle).

BTW, there have been at least fifteen more mass shootings since the one at Uvalde last week.   Over the Memorial Day weekend, basically.  How fucked up is it that Americans take guns to holiday gatherings?

Note:

Around 19.8 million AR-15 style rifles are in circulation in the US, a nationwide tally that's surged from around 8.5 million since a federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004.

The more recent estimate comes from a November 2020 statement by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. In the statement, its President and CEO Joseph Bartozzi called the AR-15 the "most popular rifle sold in America" and a "commonly-owned firearm."

The Onion doesn't hold back

From The Onion: America's Finest News Source

Word for the day: "originalism"

“What principle of constitutional self-government requires that the permissible age to purchase an AR-15 should be 18 rather than 21? A recent ruling out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed the right of 18-year-olds to buy what most of us would call ‘assault weapons.’ Its reasoning? ‘America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army.’ In fact, the enlistment age for the Continental Army was 16 — just 15 with parental consent. Some served at age 14. Is this a sufficient legal and historical basis to allow young teens to purchase nearly military-grade weapons in 2022? This type of 'originalism’ is indistinguishable from idiocy.”

-- Michael Duffy, Washington Post

U.S. helpless to prevent tragedies

UVALDE, TX—In the hours following a violent rampage in Texas in which a lone attacker killed at least 21 individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Idaho resident Kathy Miller, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

See also: Buffalo, Milwaukee, Dayton, Indianapolis, Boulder, Atlanta, San Jose, El Paso, Pittsburgh, Parkland, Thousand Oaks, Santa Fe, Virginia Beach, Bakersfield, Sutherland Springs, Las Vegas, San Bernadino, Roseburg, Isla Vista, Charleston, and this could go on all evening, but I'm tired of typing.

Related: NRA Sets 1,000 Killed in School Shooting As Amount It Would Take For Them To Reconsider Much Of Anything.

But... The NRA Is Banning Guns for Trump's Appearance at Its Upcoming Convention.

Addendum:  So who's to blame???

“It’s the parents,” Pollack told Ingraham. “It’s your responsibility where you’re sending your children to school … You need to check where your kids go to school. You need to go back to school and see. Is there a single point of entry? Do you have guards at the school?”

He went on to suggest that it’s better for parents to take their kids out “of public school and put them in a private school because a lot of these private schools, they take security way more serious … Parents it’s your responsibility where you take your children.” Ingraham was very pleased with that analysis. “Andrew is exactly right,” she concluded.

Pollack has previously expressed the idea that regulating guns is not the answer to preventing school shootings, and has advocated for schools to put in more “safety” measures like barriers, bulletproof glass and security officers. Ingraham pressed him on that point, stating that “[schools] still don’t have those safety mechanisms in place”.

There you go: it’s all the parents fault! If you don’t have the money to send your kids to private school then it’s your fault if they get shot!

Here's another analysis of absurd claims and conspiracy theories. 

Related:  Tearful Uvalde Residents Thank Police for Protecting Parking Lot from Gunman.

The #1 cause of death among American children

Not cancer or any disease presented in public service announcements...

"The previous analysis, which examined data through 2016, showed that firearm-related injuries were second only to motor vehicle crashes (both traffic-related and nontraffic-related) as the leading cause of death among children and adolescents, defined as persons 1 to 19 years of age. Since 2016, that gap has narrowed, and in 2020, firearm-related injuries became the leading cause of death in that age group. From 2019 to 2020, the relative increase in the rate of firearm-related deaths of all types (suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined) among children and adolescents was 29.5% — more than twice as high as the relative increase in the general population. The increase was seen across most demographic characteristics and types of firearm-related death."

Chart and text from the New England Journal of Medicine.  And these from a BBC article entitled America's gun culture - in seven charts:

Several of the countries in that list have compulsory military service, which results in weapons being kept at home.

A semiautomatic long rifle designed for children

Last month, the JR-15, or Junior 15, debuted at the SHOT Show, billed as the nation’s largest annual trade show for the sport shooting, hunting, and outdoor industry. The event is organized by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a firearms industry trade association. The rifle is manufactured by WEE1 Tactical, an offshoot of Schmid Tool and Engineering, which has sold AR-15 components for 30 years. A November press release from WEE1 specifically notes the JR-15’s appeal to children: “Our vision is to develop a line of shooting platforms that will safely help adults introduce children to the shooting sports,” it reads. To do that, it’s built a gun whose “ergonomics are geared towards children”: it’s lighter than an adult version, at 2.2 pounds, 20% smaller, and with a patented safety mechanism, not standard on AR-15s, which needs to be pulled out “with some force” and rotated before it can fire. Slight tweaks aside, the company boasts that it “operates just like Mom and Dad’s gun.”...

The JR-15 is a .22 caliber rifle, meaning it takes bullets of  a .22-inch diameter; .22 caliber rifles are common as starter rifles because their shots are slightly slower than the cartridges used in an AR-15, with lower recoil—less painful for little shoulders. But, says Busse, to tout a .22 as safe is a myth. (The NRA brushes it off as never “a hard-hitter.”) It’s still a semi-automatic rifle that most would consider an assault weapon. “Believe me, you do not want to get shot with a .22,” he says. “To say that they’re nonlethal—that’s a joke.”

Specifications aside, the appeal to children is clear: WEE1’s colorful logo comprises two skulls, depicted as a little boy and girl, sucking on pacifiers, and with a gun sight over one eye. The branding “keeps the wow factor with the kids”; the logos come on glow-in-the-dark children’s baseball caps, too...

More families used to teach children to hunt; nowadays, “getting up early and sitting in duck blind” is not the norm for kids, Sugarmann says. In 1997, 33% of households had hunters, down to 17% in 2018. That also means a decline in gun ownership, of 32% in that period. So the industry has carved out other routes to drive up sales: focusing more on self-defense, protection of freedoms, and targeting youths—in an effort to secure the next generation of political pro-gun advocates.

Additional information and commentary at Fast Company.

"Muscular Christianity" explained

When two members of Congress recently shared images of their well-armed families gathered in front of Christmas trees, many assumed it was merely an act of provocation, a loaded gesture designed to exasperate opponents and excite supporters...

No matter their intended effect, the photos represent a tradition far older than our current penchant for political trolling — one that, like it or not, is part of widely held interpretations of the upcoming holiday and the beliefs of many who observe it. That is the tradition of Muscular Christianity...

For more than a century, American Protestantism has been shaped by the movement known as Muscular Christianity, which arose to combat expressions of the faith that critics of the time claimed had become bookish, soft, sedentary and — as they judged it then — excessively feminine. Popular publications such as 1912’s “The Masculine Power of Christ; or, Christ Measured as a Man” argued that Jesus was “distinctly manly and virile,” and it was the task of the Christian to be so as well...

“We believe in muscular Christianity,” one advocate of this form of the faith said in 1860. “We believe that the minister of muscle will fight a more valiant and stronger battle with the passions and prejudices of men … and that saints’ bodies as well as sinners’ are none the worse for an hour at the dumb bells or weights.”

A somewhat more macho approach found particularly fertile ground in the expanding United States, where it meshed with myths of the frontier yielding to self-reliance and Manifest Destiny. Theodore Roosevelt was among its most prominent proponents. In 1903, the year he took a tour of 25 Western states, he declared, “I do not want to see Christianity professed only by weaklings; I want to see it a moving spirit among men of strength.”..

More than 40 percent of White evangelicals own firearms, far outpacing other religious groups and the general population, according to a Pew Research Center study. In a sense, American evangelical culture is a significant part of American gun culture, and vice versa. Neither would be the same without the other. Their entwined influence can be seen in scriptural arguments for bringing firearms to church, as well as on hoodies extolling the trinity of “God, Guns and Trump” worn at the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6...

Long implicit in evangelical understandings of scripture and tradition, the connection between God and guns has lately been finding more visible expression. On Dec. 25, Christians around the world will remember the birth of an infant often called the Prince of Peace. Some will also celebrate a man they’re certain would know how to handle an AR-15, and in this they see no contradiction.

More details at the Washington Post.   Comments closed.

Breast implants and firearm injuries

"This ballistics study examines whether saline breast implants can decrease tissue penetration in firearm injuries. We hypothesize that the fluid column within a saline breast implant can alter bullet velocity and/or bullet pattern of mushrooming. The two experimental groups included saline implants with 7.4 cm projection and a no implant group. The experimental design allowed the bullet to pass-through an implant and into ballistics gel (n = 10) or into ballistics gel without passage through an implant (n = 11). Shots that passed through an implant had 20.6% decreased penetration distance when compared to shots that did not pass-through an implant; this difference was statistically significant (31.9 cm vs. 40.2 cm, p < 0.001). Implant group bullets mushroomed prior to gel entry, but the no implant group mushroomed within the gel. Bullet passage through a saline breast implant results in direct bullet velocity reduction and earlier bullet mushrooming; this causes significantly decreased ballistics gel penetration."

Abstract from an article in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

This is such an American headline

Details and commentary at Boing Boing.

Reposted from 2020 to add this even more American headline:

Story at ABC News.

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

INDIANAPOLIS—In the hours following a violent rampage in Indiana in which a lone attacker killed eight individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Friday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Nebraska resident Andrew Clark, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this individual from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Title, photo, and text copied in toto from The Onion.  For my part, I'll add this list of recent mass shootings.  CNN considers an incident to be a mass shooting "if four or more people are shot, wounded, or killed, excluding the gunman."

April 15: Indianapolis

Eight people were killed and several others wounded in a mass shooting at an Indianapolis FedEx facility on Thursday night, Indianapolis.

April 15: Pensacola, Florida

At least six people were injured at an Escambia County apartment complex, as reported by CNN affiliate WEAR-TV. No suspects are in custody.

April 15: Washington, DC

Four people were shot, including a teenage girl, Thursday in Northeast Washington, DC, affiliate WRC reported.

April 13: Baltimore

Police said a dice game turned violent when two shooters opened fire on a group, injuring four, according to CNN affiliate WJZ-TV.

April 12: Chicago

Four people were shot, one fatally, and a fifth person was hit by a car in a shooting early Monday on the Eisenhower Expressway, affiliate WMAQ reported.

April 11: Wichita, Kansas

One person was killed and three others injured in a shooting at a house party at an East Wichita Airbnb, as reported by CNN affiliate KWCH.

April 11: Seattle

A toddler and three other people were injured when suspects fired into a business parking lot, according to CNN affiliate KIRO 7.

April 10: Memphis, Tennessee

One person was killed and three others were injured, including a mother and child, after gunfire was exchanged in a Memphis neighborhood, according to CNN affiliate WHBQ.

April 10: Koshkonong, Missouri

One person was killed and three others injured in a shooting at a convenience store, according to CNN affiliate KY3.

April 10: Waterbury, Connecticut

Police responded to calls of a weapons complaint and found blood trails and four injured victims, reported CNN affiliate WFSB.

April 10: Allendale, Michigan

An incident outside a house party resulted in four people being shot and one critically injured, according to CNN affiliate WWMT.

April 9: Fort Worth, Texas

One person was killed and at least five others injured when people in two vehicles shot at each other on a Fort Worth, Texas, freeway Friday night.

April 8: Bryan, Texas

A gunman killed one person and wounded at least five others -- four of them critically -- at a cabinet manufacturer, police said.

April 7: Rock Hill, South Carolina

A former NFL player killed six people -- including a prominent doctor, his wife and their two young grandchildren -- before killing himself.

April 7: Milwaukee

A 26-year-old man was charged with the shooting that killed two people and injured two others at a gas station, according to CNN affiliate WDJT.

April 6: Detroit

One person was killed and three others injured after gunfire erupted from a car, according to CNN affiliate WDIV.

April 5: Baltimore

Five victims were taken to a hospital with multiple gunshot wounds.

April 4: Monroe, Louisiana

Police responded to Bobo's Bar, where they found six victims with gunshot wounds, according to CNN affiliate KNOE.

April 4: Birmingham, Alabama

An argument between two groups of men devolved into more than 30 shots fired at a park on Easter -- killing a woman and wounding five other people, including four children, police said.

April 4: Beaumont, Texas

A man arrived at a home, threatening several people with a firearm before shooting four victims, according to Beaumont Police.

April 3: Wilmington, North Carolina

Three people were killed and four others injured in a mass shooting at a house party, according to CNN affiliate WECT.

April 3: Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Two men were arrested and charged with attempted murder after five people were injured during a shooting outside an Alabama bar, police said.

April 3: Dallas

In what police said was an apparent murder-suicide plot, 21-year-old and 19-year-old brothers made a pact to kill their parents, sister and grandmother, according to CNN affiliate KLTV.

April 3: Quincy, Florida

Seven people were injured by gunfire near a nightclub after a fight broke out into gunshots, according to CNN affiliate WCTV.

And that's just for the first half of the month of April.  What the actual FUCK.  I'll close comments for this post; if you want to say something/do something, contact your local politicians.

Introducing the Not Fucking Around Coalition

"Grandmaster Jay’s group, the NFAC, is a Black militia whose goals, other than to abjure Fucking Around, are obscure. It has a militarylike structure, fields an army of hundreds of heavily armed men and women, subscribes to esoteric racist doctrines, opposes Black Lives Matter, and follows a leader who thinks we live in a period of apocalyptic tribulation signaled by the movements of celestial bodies. Its modus operandi is to deploy a more fearsome Black militia wherever white militias dare to appear...

In Louisville, just two hours from where Jay and I sat, the NFAC first revealed the extent of its capabilities. On his YouTube channel, Jay posted a video of his troops in formation, and local news stations ran aerial shots. The men and women are ragtag and amateur, and their uniforms are not, well, uniform. One man has a Texas-flag patch Velcroed to his body armor; a woman taps the trigger guard of her AR-15 with a three-inch yellow fingernail. But my goodness, the weaponry—AR-15s galore, sniper rifles with scopes and bipods, high-capacity magazines, and enough “tactical” clothing to resupply an Army-surplus store. They look like World War II partisans meeting their clandestine commander for the first time. They stand in neat, spaced columns. I counted 28 rows of seven before I stopped counting. (By contrast, aerial photos suggest that the white militiamen present that day could have fit in a small school bus.) When Jay orders his people into motion, they go. 

So far, that is all they do. They do not bicker with other protesters, carry signs, or explain themselves. “We don’t come to sing,” Jay told a reporter from Newsweek. “We don’t come to chant.” Instead they stand, like a praetorian guard for some unseen emperor. In this laconic way, they distinguish themselves from two groups they loathe or deride: white militias (the camo-bedecked guys who show up at the same demonstrations and, sometimes, at the behest of the president, try to topple American democracy) and Black Lives Matter, whose activists tend toward nonviolence. “That movement accomplished nothing,” Jay told me, just “a lot of singing, a lot of hand-holding, a lot of sentiments and praise.”

Lots more information in a longread at The Atlantic.