According to a report from NBC News Gun dealers all over the country are using an anti–President Joe Biden song, which is very popular among Trump’s vehement supporters, to sell their customers ammunition and weapon parts.
The slogan “Let’s Go Brandon,” is a not-so-secret way for Trump supporters to say “Fuck Joe Biden.” The phrase originated from a NASCAR event in early October after a driver named Brandon Brown won the race. Although chanters were using the expletive to attack the president, the reporter who interviewed Brown was not able to understand what they were saying.
“As you can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go Brandon,’” the reporter said.
For the past several weeks, Trump’s supporters have been using the phrase in social media posts and even in public interactions (a pilot from Southwest Airlines, for example, is currently facing disciplinary action for using the words during a recent flight. The slogan was viewed until now as an innocuous, but obnoxious, way to express dissatisfaction with the current president.
But the decision to attach the phrase to gun accessories has prompted new questions about the slogan’s appropriateness in certain places.
According to the NBC News report, stores are attaching stickers with the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” on them, as well as caricatures of Biden, to accessories for AR-15-style rifles, the type of gun most frequently used in mass shootings.
Although the phrase is subtle, some stores are more direct. Columbia, South Carolina gun dealer, for example, described a part of its store as having three modes, each marked with a word in brackets expressing anger at the president.
The mode “Safe” is accompanied by “[email protected]!,” while “Fire” mode is labeled with the word “JOE!” The “Full-Auto” mode is marked with “BIDEN!” per NBC News’s report.
Gun dealers were criticized by advocates for gun reform and regulation for including such messaging on their products.
“There is nothing funny about this,” tweeted Fred GuttenbergThe father of a teenage victim in Parkland’s 2018 school shooting that claimed his life. “This ought to lead to an immediate @FBI investigation & arrests.”
Newtown Action Alliance is a grassroots group that was formed following the Sandy Hook school shooting of 2012. said that it was “dangerous & reckless”Dealers can sell accessories with the anti-Biden slogan
NBC News reached out to the Secret Service to get the agency’s view on these products and whether they constituted a threat toward Biden, but the agency didn’t respond.
Many right-wing media pundits mocked NBC NewsFor its reporting on this issue. “NBC News has now apparently decided that ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ also constitutes a threat that should be investigated by the Secret Service,” a tweet from the far right news site TheBlaze read. Und in an article from TownhallAccording to the author, NBC News was “triggered” by the fact that guns included the anti-Biden taunt.
But there’s reason to be concerned. Frank Figliuzzi is a former Assistant Director of Federal Bureau of Investigation for Counterintelligence tweeted that the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should pay attentionThese products are sold by gun dealers.
There’s also the concern that impressionable Trump supporters may feel emboldened by such rhetoric, as polling has already shown that a disturbing proportion of Trump loyalists believe violence is justifiable in certain circumstances right now.
The Public Religion Research Institute released this week a poll found that 3 in 10 Republican voters (30 percent) agree with the idea that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Among those who wrongly believe the election was “stolen” from Trump, 39 percent believe that violence may be necessary to “save” the country.
