Some call them radical, they say they’re “the future” of gun culture.
For Brut, filmmaker Jessey Dearing met “Arm Your Friends,” a leftist BIPOC group training people to use firearms.
For Brut, filmmaker Jessey Dearing met “Arm Your Friends,” a leftist BIPOC group training people to use firearms.
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00:00Guns are intensely political.
00:07White-dominated, right-wing firearms apparatus.
00:18It doesn't make them feel safer for us to have guns.
00:22Why do you think they think you're radical?
00:25Because you look like this.
00:26Yeah, and I look like this.
00:29It creates a different balance of power.
00:41Gun sales in America reached record highs at the beginning of the pandemic
00:45and have continued after ongoing political and racial violence across the country
00:49has led more Americans to question their own safety.
00:52For Brute, I'm taking you to Houston, Texas to meet up with Flight Risk,
00:55the founder of Arm Your Friends, a growing leftist and BIPOC gun organization
00:59that is training underserved communities how to use firearms.
01:15One reason why most of our team, we go by call signs on the internet,
01:19we made up our goofy nicknames, is because most of us have careers
01:24that aren't related to firearms or self-defense or anything political at all.
01:31We have to make sure that we're at least a little bit insulated
01:35and that our identities are protected just to keep our loved ones safe,
01:39keep our places of work out of all this.
01:43Because what seems normal to us, simply being a person of color,
01:47the ways that you choose to interact with the world is inherently political.
01:54Much better.
01:56No, I'm toast if anyone related to my job, like, sees this.
02:01I need to be careful because everything that we say is on the record.
02:08Remember, stay in flight, be gay, do crimes. That's the motto.
02:14Got the Arm Your Friends Medusa head patch on the kit,
02:19as well as the Klanbuster patch, just so people know what I'm about.
02:24Y'all ready to roll?
02:28What you see there is a Punisher skull in the American flag theme,
02:35which is kind of a symbol of, I guess, right-wing militancy.
02:43Of course, any symbol means a lot of things to a lot of people,
02:46but it's kind of been co-opted as a right-wing symbol.
02:54Oh, nice.
02:56We like to talk about ourselves as being the future of the gun culture.
03:00I thought Arm Your Friends would be a good way to really serve as a bridge
03:05for everyone who is turned off by the ultra-right-leaning,
03:09ultra-Republican, NRA-dominated conversation about firearms.
03:22Look at this guy. He's so cute. He's like a big dog.
03:31We're out here at the shooting range, and they're just getting started with their training.
03:34Flight said the owner told them that yesterday they got two calls
03:38telling them not to let Arm Your Friends train here because they were too radical
03:41and that they were extremists.
03:43They told me about it today, saying,
03:45hey, y'all better go watch your backs.
03:47There's some people trying to cancel your events.
03:49Knowing that we live in people's heads, rent-free, you get to live there.
03:54The more people react to what you're doing, it means you're having an impact,
03:59and you're inspiring people to care about what you're doing one way or the other.
04:03Why do you think they think you're radical?
04:06Because you look like this.
04:08And I look like this.
04:11I feel like people are afraid of what they don't understand,
04:14and we target people who the firearms industry community world is trying to keep out.
04:21So when we're removing those barriers, we're changing what their world looks like.
04:25And suddenly that's a problem.
04:27More black people getting involved, more Asian people getting involved, Hispanics, Latinos,
04:32people with left-to-center political views,
04:35or people who just view current issues differently than the monolith of the firearms industry.
04:41And our mission of bringing those people in,
04:44if that's extreme to you, you're not ready for the future,
04:48because this is what the future looks like. Absolutely.
04:51Because people like this have always existed, and they've wanted to become trained,
04:55take charge of their self-defense, but the industry has left them out of the conversation.
05:00And suddenly now we want to provide a space for them to be a part of that.
05:04Suddenly that's a problem somehow. Why is that a problem?
05:13Yeah, a problem we have had in the past is there's been calls to report the firearms that we own legally as stolen
05:19to try to get us in trouble with law enforcement.
05:21So we try our best to not show our gun serial numbers
05:25so that apples on the internet don't mark it as stolen or report it as stolen.
05:34Safety is going to be priority number one here.
05:36We are doing some janky hoodrat stuff out here today.
05:38So we'll make sure that no one leaves with any holds that they did not arrive with.
05:42Cool?
05:48All right. Eyes and ears, everyone. Eyes and ears.
05:50You on the fourth one?
05:51Yes, sir.
05:53Send them.
05:56Fire.
06:00Fire.
06:02I bought my first firearm three years ago.
06:04I realized I wanted to be in control of my own self-defense and make sure I could protect myself.
06:12We came up with the idea of turning it into a group during the protests during the summer of 2020.
06:19Dolphins! Dolphins!
06:22George Floyd being from Houston, Houston had a huge turnout for his memorial protests and celebrations of life here in the city.
06:29But where you saw HPD come out the strongest was with rubber bullets, crowd control, getting people off the street with horses.
06:40And that was like a really radicalizing moment for our new friends.
06:45You have no power to tell them to do anything, yet their badges will say to protect and serve you.
06:51But it's really protect and serve who?
06:55Are you carrying right now?
06:57Uh, no.
06:59I'm not carrying right now because I don't want trouble with the police.
07:03It's not worth it on a Sunday.
07:05But I will be carrying as soon as this interview is over.
07:08Flight Risk is open to some gun regulations, but he believes that people have the right to defend themselves.
07:13He feels that there will always be guns in America.
07:15And so for him, that means buying guns and learning to use them is the safer bet.
07:22Are we more safe with more people being armed?
07:25Yes. So we're more safe with more people being armed because it creates a different balance of power.
07:33So the conversation about firearms will never be a conversation of should there be guns.
07:39The debate that we have about gun control is who will have the guns.
07:43If you have enough money, all this stuff becomes available to you.
07:47So the government, rich people, the elites will always have guns.
07:52The right of self-defense is something that should be expanded to people, everyday people, working class people.
07:58Does that have a safety at all?
08:00Uh, no.
08:01Yeah, yeah, exactly.
08:02To be honest, before 2020, I was pretty much anti-gun.
08:07You know, every time there's like a school shooting or something, I'm like, oh man, what if we just didn't have guns at all in this country?
08:13I kind of like turned around on that.
08:15I thought that, you know, there's always going to be somebody out there that's armed and it would be good to also be armed.
08:25Hey, three hits, it's still progress.
08:37Let me get one more, let me get one more run.
08:42No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
08:44That was my fourth one.
08:45No, no, no, no, no, no.
08:49You gotta slow down, bro. Just slow down.
08:51Slow down.
09:00Since January 6th, I kind of had an increased interest in finding out, like, where the right wing was going in the country.
09:08Hey, hey, hey.
09:14Project Cerberus was started to document and store information and publicly accessible data about far right wing and right wing hate groups
09:24so that we can let members of our community and aligned groups know who's out there, know the language that they're using, and know what they're doing.
09:31This is a picture that was publicly posted on their Instagram account.
09:36This patch is what's called a Totenkampf, which is the actual symbol of the 3rd Panzer Division of the SS.
09:45So these are Nazi special forces soldiers from World War II.
09:51That's the symbol they used being worn on and publicly displayed on people who claim to be active duty law enforcement, active duty special operations,
10:02and these people are out in the world providing training to people.
10:04They tried to defend themselves and say that, oh, it's not a Nazi symbol.
10:08But it's important to understand that when you catch people doing right wing things and Nazi things, that they will find a way to massage it.
10:17But if you go Google a Totenkampf yourself, you can be the judge of what that symbol is.
10:25Seeing other groups doing stuff like this, it's a reminder that history's not over.
10:29And all I know is that I don't want to face it alone.
10:32So knowing that there are people out there who think like that, who feel like that, who would think of me in this way,
10:39I just want to make sure that I'm backing up my friends, I'm making my friends safer, and that they're making me safer.
10:50Yo, what's up, my boy?
10:52Nah, I was just wondering if you were still good for this shit.
10:55Yeah, bro.
10:57I'm about to be there right now. I'll be there, bro.
10:59Yeah, no worries, man. I'll be there soon, and I'll just see you when you get in.
11:14Actually, I'm not going to name this one because this is my beginner rifle still.
11:18I just feel like there's a lot you can learn on a beginner rifle.
11:21But my next one, I'm going to get it silver-chromed out. I'll give that one a name.
11:41To make sure that the slide goes forward, we're going to push down on this mechanism here with our thumbs.
11:47So push.
11:48Yeah, that's how you lock the slide forward.
11:50You're going to keep your hand pushed all the way up into this lip here.
11:55And to get around into the chamber, you'll pull back on the optic.
12:00So release that again.
12:03Like here.
12:04Cool.
12:06Nice. Dude, you got the hang of it.
12:08Oh, man. Appreciate it, dawg.
12:09Look at this. Education.
12:11Easy.
12:17They always smile right after, like, wait a minute.
12:20It's crazy, right?
12:21It's like typing a key.
12:23It's like typing a key.
12:26This was, like, the first time I've gone to a range and, like, not had a second thought.
12:30But, like, I'm trans, so I was a girl until six months ago.
12:34I was a brown girl in Texas trying to go to a gun range.
12:38It's knowing that there are other people who are capable of ensuring your safety with you in a broader sense.
12:45Exactly. Someone's following you home. Someone's road raging behind you, following you home.
12:49Instead of stopping, instead of panicking, you drive to the nearest person in your network, and they have your back.
12:55That's what, like, makes you safer, even on the days where you're not caring, you don't feel like caring.
13:01You're going to some place where it's just not right to carry.
13:05A lot of trans women were being murdered in 2020, and the number is even higher this year.
13:10When someone is at a bar and hitting on them, but you feel like it's really uncomfortable,
13:15and they're probably picking up on the fact that you're trans, you call me before something gets bad.
13:20Because you can't call the cops at that point, because what are you calling me for?
13:23I think this guy's going to get violent when he realizes that I have a penis.
13:26Like, that's a conversation that cops don't want to have either.
13:29You know, like, that's something that they get incredibly uncomfortable about.
13:32That's something that they could hurt someone for.
13:34This is something that I actually do need to learn about.
13:36You know, it's like, we're getting to that stage in life where it's like, I want to be safer.
13:39I want to be able to protect my friends.
13:40I want to be able to have some knowledge to where I can use these skills if I need to if that situation arises.
13:44So, yeah, it worked out pretty well.
13:47It was a great experience. Thank you for having me out here, man. It means a lot to me.
13:50I'm going to get this locked in. Get some rest. Please.
13:54We're going the same way. Yeah, we are.
13:59We don't make lightly of the ability to, you know, injure other people.
14:03We don't talk about life as if it has no meaning.
14:06We always remind people that it should be a last line of defense.
14:10It's such, like, a somber decision.
14:14We're going the same way.