18-year-old walk in, a 20-year-old and buy an ar-15. that s why back in 1994 i took on the nra and passed the assault weapons ban. for ten years mass shootings were down. ten years in a row. i was going to say i passed that legislation in 1994 as a senator. but in 2004 republicans let that ban expire. what happened? mass shootings in america tripled. it s time to ban these. it s time to ban these weapons. we did it before. we can do it again. [ applause ] it s time to hold every elected official s feet to the fire and ask them are you for banning assault weapons, yes or no? ask them. if the answer is no, vote against them. [ applause ] look, i m prouder that after seven years we finally had a senate confirm director of alcohol, tobacco and firearms responsible for fighting gun crimes, for seven years the other team would not let us appoint anyone to that job. incredibly important job to help local law enforcement, federal law enforcement identify the ballistics. a whole range
the president the ex-president to be headed, donald trump. he is focused now on getting his even more fringe base than before riled up again. in q forums, by the way, qanon forums, which had been largely dead over the last few amongst, because they ran out of hope that, you know, their plan that he was secretly still running the country or something could be enacted. it fired them back up today, and one of the top posts in response to donald trump s post today was just one that said, nuke them from orbit, which was referring to the deep state and people like joe biden. let me read ben, i just want to give our viewers some context. i m not sure i ve ever led with the qanon story on this program since it launched. this is senator chris murphy s tweet today. i just think everyone, including the mainstream press, needs to take seriously the growing culmination between
trump s operation, the extremist 4 chan/q crowd and the monarchist new right. this is chris wray, for those who haven t been following every whiff and blow of trump s descent into madness. we understand qanon to be a set of complex conspiracy theories largely promoted online, which has sort of morphed into more of a movement, and like a lot other conspiracy theories, the effects of covid, anxiety, social insulation social isolation, financial hardship, et cetera, all exacerbate people s vulnerability to those theories. and we are concerned about the potential that those things can lead to violence. we have arrested at least five self-identified qanon adherents related to the january 6th attack, specifically. ben, one more data point, and then i m going to turn this back to you. the new york times is
recording that news guard, a media watchdog that analyzes the credibility of news outlets, found 88 users promoting the qanon conspiracy theory on truth social, each to more than 10,000 followers, 32 of those were previously banned by twitter. you re talking today about a bit of a renaissance or a resurgence. is there any policing i think i can answer this question, but i still want to know from you. is there any policing or gating or guarding or kicking off the qanon conspiracy theorists that christopher wray, trump s hand-picked fbi director, links there to all of the nexuses between domestic violent extremism? no, there s no gate keeping there. the only gatekeeping i ve seen on truth social is the time a couple weeks ago when a person went to an fbi field office in cincinnati and tried to shoot through it shoot through the glass window with a nail gun so he could use his ar-15 once he got inside. that guy had an account on truth social, and he said he was going to go do that t
distance himself from qanon, he refused, not once, but twice. it is so reminiscent of when he was asked to distance himself from david duke, and he said, i disavow, what do you want me to do, jake? to the proud boys, what do you want me to do, chris wallace? stand back and stand by. i mean, he wants these associations. well, he needs them. i mean, they re the they re the base of his coalition. so, he i mean, without, you know, white nationalism, without tribalism, without being their tribal strong man, the emperor has no clothes. it s not that like they like trump for his free market economic theories. he is their tribal he is their tribal strong man, and by the way, so he can get away with a lot of things that typically our typical politicians won t get away with because the only thing that they have vested in him is their