One of the more interesting things to come out of the Jan. 6th hearings is the greater detail about the involvement of members of Congress. One detail yesterday was the involvement of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in the fake electors plot. He somewhat lamely passed it off as the rogue behavior of an unnamed intern. Here’s one of several videos of Johnson yesterday rushing away from reporters trying to avoid questions.

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Let me comment briefly on the TPM Reader responses below on the “tactical” lifestyle, Jan. 6th, mass shootings and more. Most of these have been in the vein of, “It’s not just the long wars, it’s this too.” And I think in every case I agree. No big historical development or reality pops up out of nowhere, unrooted to the particular historical era in which it arises.

It’s true as MF puts it that the millions of young American men who saw combat in World War II didn’t come back and spend years dressing up as GIs. In a way they didn’t have to as they returned to a society rapidly reorganized around the Cold War. It’s worth noting that the long-running abandoned POW activism emerging out of the Vietnam War was in many ways just that and it was a seedbed of late 20th century right wing activism. But certainly the mere existence of foreign conflicts didn’t “cause” the tactical firearms culture. A whole host of factors conditioned that reaction.

From TPM Reader JS …

Just saw your take, via the wayback machine, regarding the “tactical” culture and Greitens’ ridiculous ad. One thing Busse left out in his Atlantic article and SS didn’t mention in his email is the impact the “Call of Duty” video game series has had on all of this. CoD is a first-person shooter game, which means you play the game from your character’s eye view – you literally feel like you’re in combat.

From TPM Reader FF …

I would object to the notion of our deployments in the Middle East being the prime mover in guns moving to a tactical culture. Instead, I would look closer at investment firms like Citadel and Black Rock, whose participation in the weapons market was very much predicated on flooding the market with more and powerful weaponry to increase returns.

From TPM Reader JS …

I am not an “everything is racism” guy. But from my perspective, “tacticool” is all about a fantasy these guys have that involves something like a Falling Down rampage where they shoot—most of the time—blacks.

From TPM Reader MF …

Ryan Busse, former firearms industry exec, is definitely distorting his recollection of the industry 25 years ago. Once Wayne LaPierre became NRA president in 1991, and especially after Waco in 1993, the right-wing/tactical/AR-15 culture took off. The 1994 Clinton crime bill mobilized this politically. I know, I was in Congress answering a flood of constituent mail.

Eric Greitens is a predator and a degenerate. We knew that and today’s ad showing him launching commando raids to murder or “hunt” RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) only cements that reputation. But his ad — of a piece with the Jan. 6th insurrection and mass shootings across the United States — is part of a much longer trajectory. While I was familiar with the different parts of the story I only really came to understand it when I read this email from TPM Reader SS ten years ago (yes, back in 2012, days after the Newtown massacre).

I mentioned a few days ago that the most compelling part of the Jan 6 committee hearings so far for me has been the description of the particulars of how the breach of the Capitol complex happened. The story is usually presented as something like this. There was a big group of angry and potentially violent Trumpers. There was a much smaller group, maybe as few as a few dozens of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers with a more focused ideology, a clearer plan of the insurrection and so forth. They were both more eager to get violent and had a lot more experience getting violent. But they were in the extreme minority of the people up there. So even though they’re now the ones facing serious charges including seditious conspiracy they are only a small part of what happened.

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