They hate the US government, and they're multiplying: the terrifying rise of 'sovereign citizens'

[billh58]

While US counter-terrorism efforts remain locked on Islamist extremism, the growing threat from homegrown, rightwing extremists is even more pressing.

On 20 May 2010, a police officer pulled over a white Ohio minivan on Interstate 40, near West Memphis, Arkansas. Unbeknown to officer Bill Evans, the occupants of the car, Jerry Kane Jr, and his teenage son, Joseph Kane, were self-described “sovereign citizens”: members of a growing domestic extremist movement whose adherents reject the authority of federal, state and local law.

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Suddenly, Jerry Kane turned and tackled Evans, knocking him down into a ditch. The younger Kane vaulted from the passenger side of the minivan and opened fire with an AK-47. Evans, an experienced officer who also served on the Swat team, was fatally wounded before he even drew his weapon. Paudert was struck down moments later while returning fire.

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Although the Trump administration is reportedly planning to restructure the Department of Homeland Security’s countering violent extremism (CVE) program to focus exclusively on radical Islam, a 2014 national survey of 175 law enforcement agencies ranked sovereign citizens, not Islamic terrorists, as the most pressing terrorist threat. The survey ranked Islamic terrorists a close second, with the following top three threats all domestic in origin and sometimes overlapping: the militia movement, racist skinheads, and the neo-Nazi movement.

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“Many of [the people attracted to such movements] are guys my age, middle-aged white guys. They’re seeing profound change and seeing that they have been left behind by the economic success of others and they want to return to a never-existent idyllic age when everyone was happy and everyone was white and everyone was self-sufficient.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/15/sovereign-citizens-rightwing-terrorism-hate-us-government

Interestingly, "middle-aged white guys" from Red states are the predominant demographic for gun owners:

"Notably, while Republican party identification is associated with higher rates of gun ownership -- 38% versus 22% for Democrats -- the statistical model shows party is a weaker predictor of gun ownership, once other factors are taken into account. In other words, higher rates of Republican gun ownership likely result more from the fact that men, Southerners, and married people tend to identify as Republicans than from something about being a Republican drawing one to owning a gun."

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160223/men-married-southerners-likely-gun-owners.aspx

Trump's right-wing militant supporters are enthusiastically supportive of his bigoted, racist war against Islam because it distracts attention from their bigoted, racist, anti-American acts of domestic terror. To Trump and his supporters, the Constitution is a white, Christian manifesto written by rich slave-holders for the betterment of the white race.