This lunatic got 25 years in prison. He was teaching bomb making, booby traps, sniping, organizing militias, assassinations, killing federal agents, and training people to be insurgents in a future civil war. He ran a business that he used to teach the skills he learned after two tours in Iraq. He was part of a network of militias and killers that he organized and trained. One of his disciples went on a rampage in New York and was killed by police.
These people are so far down the rabbit hole and so radicalized that they will likely never be deprogrammed. This isn’t an isolated incident. There are tens of thousands of these right-wing militia types actively training and stockpiling supplies for a war against the rest of us. A small percent of them become radicalized in the military but it’s become a big problem in the veteran community. Most of these maniacs hang out at the VFW watching Fox/OAN/Newsmax all da and buy into Republican propaganda about their lives sucking because of Dems and minorities.
An inconvenient truth is that most of these bozos ended up in the military because they were chronically unemployable. After leaving the military where they were treated like children and had no social or work skills their lives took a sharp downturn. With only GED’s and high school diplomas they can’t find decent work. The overwhelming majority never learned any employment skills in the military and have zero idea of how to function as an adult in society. This is a shock after having inflated views of themselves as warriors. Few if any have the aptitude or desire to take advantage of higher education opportunities provided to them. History has taught us that the underclass and disgruntled veterans in particular are ripe for radicalization.
As a society we need need the military to active teach life skills to their members before turning them loose into society destined for failure. We can’t have a pipeline of traumatized veterans from the forever wars making a living by teaching right-wingers how to be an effective insurgent in a future civil war against the government, the Dems, minorities, urban dwellers etc. Further we need to enact anti-militia laws ASAP and restrict the sale and possession of military grade weaponry and explosives. It is absolute madness that we have no safeguards in place to prevent these homocidal from operating right out in the open, literally stating that their purpose is to wage a shooting war against the rest of us.
To rub salt in the wound, this guy was reported for serious crimes over a dozen times over a period of a dozen years. He was building land mines and pipe bombs in his home. He was posting on YouTube instructional videos of how to make improvised bombs and how to wage war against the US government.