The video begins with Brandon Herrera staring intently into the camera.
asserted
Herrera → begin → camera
He is filming himself in a hotel room seated between twin beds, his black hair slicked back and beard neatly trimmed.
asserted
beard → film → beds
He is wearing a T-shirt branded with his trademark nickname, “The AK Guy”, above the image of a semi-automatic rifle primed for action.
asserted
He → wear → action
Three days earlier, on 3 August 2019, a white nationalist armed with a semi-automatic firearm not dissimilar to the one stamped across Herrera’s chest entered a busy Walmart store in the Texas border city of El Paso and opened fire.
asserted
nationalist → arm → fire
Within minutes the shooter had unloaded about 90 rounds, killing 23 people and injuring 22 more.
asserted
shooter → unload → 22
With the massacre still dominating headlines, most public figures were limiting themselves to vanilla expressions of “thoughts and prayers”.
asserted
figures → dominate → thoughts
He opened his video with a warning: what viewers were about to hear might sound “a little harsh”.
uncertain
viewers → open → what
But, he assured them, it was “data driven” and came from “a place of empathy”.
asserted
it → assure → empathy
Then he said: “With these terrible mass shootings, you should be really glad that some of these people are using guns to do this …
asserted
some → say → this
I think we are fortunate that these people are using guns.”
asserted
people → think → guns
Had the perpetrator of the El Paso massacre used a truck, or a fertiliser bomb, the death toll might have been much higher, Herrera opined.
uncertain
Herrera → use → truck
He then attempted to back up the argument with statistics: the average victim count in mass shootings is 15; the Oklahoma City bombing killed 168.
asserted
bombing → attempt → 168
Such sophistry could not disguise his core argument, however.
uncertain
sophistry → disguise → argument
With the blood barely dry on the Walmart floor, Herrera was urging his viewers to celebrate the choice of weapon used in the carnage – a military-style AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
asserted
Herrera → urge → carnage
Herrera, 30, has made a name for himself producing such extreme out-of-the-box pro-gun statements.
asserted
Herrera → make → statements
It is what launched him as a prominent “gunfluencer” with 4.27m subscribers to his YouTube channel, where his videos have been viewed almost 860m times.
asserted
videos → launch → channel
And now, he is the frontrunner in the race to represent the border district of south-west Texas in November’s midterm elections.
asserted
he → represent → elections
Texas’s congressional district 23 is being closely watched as potentially decisive in the battle to control the House of Representatives through Donald Trump’s final two years in the White House.
asserted
district → watch → House
Democrats are hoping that such an extreme candidate, even by Texas’s standards, could be vulnerable at the ballot box.
uncertain
candidate → hop → box
They aim to flip the seat that has been in Republican hands since 2015.
asserted
that → aim → 2015
Should he win the midterm election in Texas’s congressional district 23, Herrera will take what he calls his “second amendment absolutism” to Washington, with possible ramifications for nationwide gun laws and debate.
asserted
he → win → laws
It would mean that a Republican committed to loosening America’s already lax gun laws would become the voice in Congress for those who live in the outskirts of El Paso, the city left devastated by that 2019 Walmart mass shooting.
asserted
who → mean → shooting
More chillingly still, Herrera would also represent the town of Uvalde where, in May 2022, an 18-year-old former student killed 19 children and two teachers.
uncertain
student → represent → children
Should he win, she says, there could be long-lasting consequences.
uncertain
she → win → ?
“His idea that somehow we should be grateful that firearms are being used in mass killings is a very cynical ploy to numb people to gun violence, to make them expect it and even accept it.
asserted
them → use → it
The more Brandon Herreras we elect to Congress, the more likely that will be our destiny.
asserted
that → elect → Congress
Herrera has been presenting himself on the campaign trail as a Trump-endorsed “America First” Republican.
asserted
Herrera → present → Republican
He has promised the more than half a million voters scattered across the sprawling, majority-Latino district that he will impose no new taxes, double down on the border crackdown and oppose government funding for abortion.
asserted
he → promise → abortion
But it was guns – and specifically the Uvalde school shooting – that brought him into politics.
asserted
that → bring → politics
Herrera grew up in a military family in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and dropped out of college to build his own firearms manufacturing business, focusing on the growing market for semi-automatic rifles.
asserted
Herrera → grow → rifles
He spent years developing his own spin on the Soviet Kalashnikov rifle, the AK-47.
asserted
He → spend → rifle
He scaled up the weapon so that it was capable of taking huge 0.50-caliber cartridges, ammunition developed for Browning heavy machine guns more than a century ago.
asserted
it → scale → guns
He called his invention the AK-50, and began marketing it through his company, The AK Guy Inc. Citing frustrations with state-wide Covid restrictions, Herrera relocated the company to San Antonio, Texas, in 2020.
asserted
Herrera → call → 2020
Two years later, Uvalde became the site of one of the worst school shootings in American history.
asserted
Uvalde → become → history
The massacre lasted 77 minutes, the shooter killing his victims at close range as police held back for more than an hour before they finally broke into the classroom and killed him.
asserted
they → last → him
Riding the ensuing wave of revulsion, Joe Biden signed into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which strengthened background checks for buyers under 21 and tightened restrictions on firearm possession for some domestic-abuse offenders.
asserted
which → rid → offenders
Eric Ruben, an expert on gun policy at the SMU Dedman school of law in Dallas, Texas, says that Uvalde “jolted Congress into passing its first major piece of gun safety legislation in a quarter of a century”.
asserted
Uvalde → say → century
Furious that Tony Gonzales, the Republican congressman representing Uvalde, had backed Biden’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Herrera decided to challenge him for his seat.
asserted
Herrera → represent → seat
“If you vote against our interests, if you vote against gun rights,” he warned Gonzales in 2024, “we will primary you, and we will take your fucking job.
asserted
we → vote → job
”
He did challenge Gonzales that year, losing to the incumbent narrowly, and was repeating the effort this April when Gonzales abruptly resigned from Congress in a sex scandal.
asserted
Gonzales → challenge → scandal
…and 86 more, not listed.
The Aporia
