Report Highlights: Mass shootings accounted for 0.08% of gun deaths in the U.S. between 1968 and 2025. This report analyzes the genders of mass shooters.

• Between 1968 and 2026, there were 197 male mass shooters in the U.S.
• Between 1968 and 2026, there were two female mass shooters in the U.S.
• Between 1968 and 2026, there were two confirmed transgender mass shooters in the U.S.

Related Studies:

Ammo.com is a reputable source. You can view the sources used in this article HERE.

Methodology

This analysis examines U.S. mass shootings using a narrow, event-based definition. Incidents that did not occur in public places with fewer than four fatalities (excluding the shooter) were not counted. Incidents involving family or domestic violence, gang or criminal activity, and spree shootings were also excluded, as these types of shootings have varying causes and factors.

The historical dataset on mass shootings spans 1968 through early 2026. It is compiled primarily from The Violence Project and FBI active shooter reporting, and supplemented by Mother Jones for cross-referencing and recent updates. Qualifying 2025-2026 incidents were added manually based on verified fatality counts and public reports.

Shooter gender was identified using official court records, law-enforcement statements, and consistent reporting by reliable news outlets. Transgender or non-binary classifications were included only when gender identity was explicitly documented in court filings or widely reported by credible sources; rumor-based or contested claims were excluded.

Per capita rates are based on modern U.S. population estimates. Gender identity (outside of male and female) was inconsistently recorded in earlier decades. Adopting a broader definition of “mass shootings” produces larger incident counts, but does not alter the overall gender distribution of shooters.

Male Mass Shooters 1968-2026

There were nearly 2 million gun deaths in the U.S. between 1968 and 2025. Of those, mass shootings accounted for 0.08% of all gun deaths (1,450). Males committed the largest percentage of them.

How Many Mass Shooters Are Male?

Of the 201 mass shooters in the U.S. between 1968 and 2026, 197 were male.

What Percentage of Mass Shooters Are Male

Males committed 98% of mass shootings in the U.S. since 1968.

Female Mass Shooters 1968-2026

Female mass shooters are rare. All reported female mass shooters acted with male accomplices.

How Many Mass Shooters Are Female?

Females account for two of the 201 mass shooters since 1968.

What Percentage of Mass Shooters Are Female

Females committed 1% of mass shootings in the U.S. since 1968.

Transgender Mass Shooters 1968-2026

Of the 201 mass shooters in the U.S. between 1968 and 2026, two were committed by transgender individuals.

Transgender people account for 1.2% of the U.S. population in 2026. Only two confirmed transgender individuals committed a mass shooting (where four or more people were killed in a public place) since 1968.

Note: A broader definition of “mass shooting,” such as that used by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), yields 5,748 mass shootings in the U.S. since 2012. Of those, five shooters were transgender. Expanding or narrowing the definition has no statistically significant impact on the overall rates of the genders of mass shooters.

Mass Shooting Definitions

The definition of “mass shooting” varies depending on the source. Many publications use a narrow definition (e.g. excluding gang/family violence), while others use broader ones (e.g. including all shootings, or incidents of brandishing in public places).

Databases that use broader definitions include all causes, while those that include only a narrow scope of shootings measure targeted attacks. This report focuses on targeted attacks, rather than all incidents of public shootings.

The GVA counted 5,748 mass shootings in the U.S. since 2012. It does not list all shooters’ genders, and includes all public shootings with four or more victims (including injuries and fatalities).

Mother Jones counted 158 mass shootings since 1984. This database only includes indiscriminate shootings in public places where four or more victims are killed, excluding the shooter. It also excludes crime-related violence (gangs, drive-by shootings, etc.) and family violence.

The Violence Project counted 198 mass shootings between 1966 and 2024. This database focuses on mass shootings, rather than all incidents of gun violence (i.e. four or more killed excluding the shooter, with no connections to crime or family violence).

For the purposes of this article, mass shootings and shooter gender are defined as clearly and consistently as the available data allow. Inconsistent historical recording of gender identity, especially for transgender individuals, limits the scope of inference that can be drawn from the data.

Wrap-Up

Mass shootings are a rare occurrence, constituting 0.08% of all gun deaths in the U.S. since 1968. Mass shooters were predominately male, while female mass shooters were always accompanied by male accomplices. Transgender shooters have only been identifiable in recent years, but account for very few mass shootings across all databases.

Sources

1. U.S. Mass Shootings and Mass Shooters: The Violence Project
2. US Mass Shootings, 1982-2025: Data From Mother Jones’ Investigation
3. Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2024
4. Mass Shootings in the US: Fast Facts
5. Mass Shooting Fact Sheet
6. Non-Binary Shooting Suspect Faces Judge in Colorado
7. Behavioral Threat Assessment of Elizabeth Audrey Hale

Article posted with permission from Ammo.com

The post 2026: Mass Shooters In The US By Gender appeared first on The Washington Standard.

One filing submitted by Jessica Swanson, PPSE’s former Director of Education, alleges she was fired by the new interim CEO, Mairo Akposé, in retaliation for voicing concerns about Akposé.

Before being suddenly promoted to CEO, Akposé was the Human Resources Director. Swanson alleges that she first complained about Akposé in her HR role when Akposé failed to refer to the current CEO as “they/them” in a meeting.

Swanson alleges she complained again when Akposé used the birth name of a recently fired transgender employee, “out[ing] them as transgender without their consent.”

Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, states, “Planned Parenthood has spent exorbitant amounts of money to push transgender ideology down America’s throat. But their own leadership doesn’t even buy it. And, now, the very same ideology it tried to force Americans to follow is tearing apart this affiliate.”

“Threat From Within”

Mairo Akposé took over as interim CEO in July 2024, after CEO Carol McDonald — the affiliate’s first “non-binary” CEO — abruptly resigned. McDonald was the CEO for less than eight months, and there has been little reported as to the reason for her resignation. However, her Instagram account currently lists her as a part of the Board of Directors for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

According to former and current PPSE employees, Akposé was considered a disconcerting choice from the start. She reportedly had little to no experience in the abortion industry and — maybe even more alarming to the abortion radicals working at Planned Parenthood — she maintains a social media presence as “The Working Wife,” stating she is “a Wife and Mother who happens to work.” It seems serving on the Board of Trustees for Berry College — a school Mother Jones described as “one of the country’s most conservative” — was another strike against her.

In the months following her promotion, Akposé apparently proceeded to clean house, firing and hiring employees, including the hire of a new Executive Director — a previous Georgia City Council Woman named Karen Rene who, just years before, had the audacity to call herself pro-life and pro-choice in the same sentence.

This was too much for the PPSE employees. By October of 2025, former and current employees created a campaign called “Save PPSE” which alleged that both Akposé and Rene were a “dangerous threat from within” and did not align with Planned Parenthood’s pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQ agenda.

PPSE higher-ups responded to the criticisms with an independent investigation that did not seem to take very long. By November 2025, a press release from the Board of Directors stated the outside firm found “no merit” to the allegations. The Board also stated Akposé would remain in her role as interim CEO.

Employees were not satisfied. The “Save PPSE” campaign gave a public statement “unequivocally reject[ing] the findings” and deemed the conclusion “false, deeply irresponsible, and…predictable.”

NDA’s Required 

One month later, however, TN Repro News suddenly published an article stating that inside sources confirmed Akposé had resigned, and that Karen Rene and Claire Moon (Akposé’s Chief of Staff) “no longer appeared on staff org charts,” meaning their positions were now vacant.

Not all the changes in staffing were reportedly made public. Instead, a source told TN Repro News that all staff were asked to sign an Employee Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreement by Monday, January 5. Aside from forcing employees to remain silent on protected information, “whether true or false,” the NDA also “extends confidentiality obligations indefinitely beyond employment.”

Since that time, all evidence of the “Save PPSE” campaign has been scrubbed from the internet. All posts from its Instagram account have been removed and a petition the campaign circulated on Google Docs is no longer accessible.

“Planned Parenthood’s first line of defense is always to silence the voices that could expose any truth about its abuses, whether it be its own employees, injured women, or family members of the mothers it has killed,” says Newman. “It operates exactly like the mafia — you keep quiet or Planned Parenthood will destroy you.”

However, the six former employees bringing charges of discrimination were fired months before this round of NDA’s. These reportedly include: Former PPSE Georgia State Director Kaylah Oates-Marable; Former Vice President of Communications and Marketing Jaylen Black; Former Director of Education Jessica Swanson; Former Mississippi Outreach Coordinator LaTerria Shelby; Former Public Policy and Organizing Manager Hannah Davis; Former Community Organizer Kim Luong.

A More Radical Affiliate?

In the meantime, Planned Parenthood Los Angeles unexpectedly announced in early February that it will partner with PPSE in an “interim leadership capacity.”

PPSE is a shrinking affiliate with few locations. In Alabama, there is now only one PPSE location — and it cannot perform abortions. In Mississippi, there are none. Georgia, where PPSE is headquartered, remains the only state where the affiliate can profit from abortion, and only at four locations.

Newman states, “This affiliate is losing ground, employees are bringing charges, and their leadership dynamic is a trainwreck — the same things we have seen in several other affiliates that are falling apart.”

Last year, Planned Parenthood was forced to shut down its Gulf Coast affiliate. Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) — located in one of the most pro-abortion states in America — has also been rife with conflict. In the last few years, employees have called it out for everything from systemic racism to financial malfeasance. In 2025, PPGNY was even forced to shut down Planned Parenthood’s main flagship clinic, the Margaret Sanger Center in Manhattan.

Lost Medicaid funding and strong pro-life protections in at least 13 states have also forced Planned Parenthood to combine separate affiliates into one. When Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast shut down, for example, its remaining clinics were rolled into Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. In Florida, two affiliates were combined last year to create one singular affiliate, Planned Parenthood of Florida.

It is also not unheard of for Planned Parenthood to combine affiliates across a wide range of states not geographically close to one another. The affiliate Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky (PPGNHAIK) can attest to that.

“It would not surprise me if Planned Parenthood Los Angeles acquired PPSE, rolling its funding and clinics into the region and using it as a stronghold to expand abortion in the South,” says Newman.

In fact, in PPSE’s November press release, the Board of Directors also stated Planned Parenthood Action Fund — the main political arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America — would take a “more active role in leading advocacy and political work in Georgia.”

Georgia is bordered by two states that are abortion-free (AL, TN), two states with six-week bans (FL, SC), and one state with a 12-week ban (NC). It is essentially a central hub where Planned Parenthood might believe it can make its stand to retarget preborn babies in the South.

“Abortion radicals failed to pass an abortion amendment in Florida,” Newman adds, “and South Carolina has made it clear that Planned Parenthood will not receive their taxpayer money. Georgia is the battleground that makes the most sense. And with PPSE falling apart, why wouldn’t Planned Parenthood’s radicals in California try to swoop in and take over? When everyone in your organization is dedicated to the violent destruction of human life, what’s one more hostile takeover?”

This article was originally published by Operation Rescue, a leading pro-life, Christian activist organization dedicated to exposing abortion abuses, demanding enforcement, saving innocent lives, and building an abortion-free America. The author, Sarah Neely, is Chief Operating Officer for Operation Rescue.

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“Stacie-Marie” Laughton, a 41-year-old biological male who is so delusional that he thinks he is a woman and was also a representative in New Hampshire until 2022, entered his guilty pleas in federal court in Boston in relation to his participation in the creation of material containing child sex abuse.

OOP — NH state Rep. Stacie-Marie Laughton, the first openly TRANS lawmaker pleads GUILTY to child sex charges involving kids as young as 3.

This is a monster who Democrats once hailed as “historic”

We warned you.pic.twitter.com/sArDm2hjwk

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 26, 2026

Laughton was not alone in this crime.  His partner, Lindsay Groves, was also indicted on three counts of sexual exploitation of children in 2023.

To be clear, Groves worked at a daycare in Tynsborough, Massachusetts.  It’s just as hard to make out whether she is a woman or a man, too, though I believe she is a woman.  While working, Groves did take naked pictures of 3-5-year-old children and then sent them to Laughton.  It’s another reason for parents to do all they can to rear their children in their own homes.

The first openly trans lawmaker in the US — who was hailed as a trail-blazer — has admitted to sickening child sex charges involving young kids in a daycare.https://t.co/TOZNiLuKvK

— Terry Newman (@TLNewmanMTL) February 26, 2026

Just to be clear, while Jesus warned that those who would cause little ones to stumble should take a millstone and wrap it around their own necks and throw themselves into the sea, this guy is only facing 30 years in jail at the People’s expense because the People have forgotten how to bring justice.

First openly trans US lawmaker admits to horrific child sex charges involving kids as young as 3 years old. THREE YEARS OLD.

Laughton faces up to 30 years in federal prison. pic.twitter.com/qthRQwfN95

— iTamara (@Real___iTamara) February 27, 2026

According to the New York Post, “The pair are due to be sentenced in February. Sexual exploitation of children is punishable by between 15 and 30 years in prison, a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000.”

“Laughton was previously forced to resign twice from the New Hampshire House over separate legal issues — including three felony convictions in 2008 for credit card fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud,” the report added.

Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media

The post First Openly Trans-Delusional Representative Pleads Guilty To CHILD SEX Charges (As Young As 3) appeared first on The Washington Standard.

In some cases, the administration has kept immigrants locked up even after a judge has ordered their release, according to an investigation by Reuters.

I warned about the Trump administration’s “crackdown” on illegals as soon as it began, and it became apparent that it wasn’t just illegal aliens that were being arrested, deported and imprisoned.  Instead, it was people who were lawfully here and even American citizens!  Now, a new report indicates that over 4,400 people were illegally jailed by the unconstitutional agency, carrying out unconstitutional duties, in less than five months!

Think about that a second.  Lawless, armed, masked thugs violated more than 4,400 people’s rights in less than five months!  Yet, no one is held accountable for these crimes.

Common Dreams reports:

Judges across the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since the start of October that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has illegally detained immigrants, according to a Reuters investigation published Saturday.

As President Donald Trump carries out his unprecedented “mass deportation” crusade, the number of people in ICE custody ballooned to 68,000 this month, up 75% from when he took office.

Midway through 2025, the administration had begun pushing for a daily quota of 3,000 arrests per day, with the goal of reaching 1 million per year. This has led to the targeting of mostly people with no criminal records rather than the “worst of the worst,” as the administration often claims.

Courts have ruled 4,400 times that ICE jailed people illegally. It hasn’t stopped. https://t.co/a5qRuwbRHP https://t.co/a5qRuwbRHP

— Reuters (@Reuters) February 14, 2026

Reuters’ reporting suggests chasing this number has also resulted in a staggering number of arrests that judges have later found to be illegal.

Since the beginning of Trump’s term, immigrants have filed more than 20,200 habeas corpus petitions, claiming they were held indefinitely without trial in violation of the Constitution.

In at least 4,421 cases, more than 400 federal judges have ruled that their detentions were illegal.

Last month, more than 6,000 habeas petitions were filed. Prior to the second Trump administration, no other month dating back to 2010 had seen even 500.

In part due to the sheer volume of legal challenges, the Trump administration has often failed to comply with court rulings, leaving people locked up even after judges ordered them to be released.

Reuters’ new report is the most comprehensive examination to date of the administration’s routine violation of the law with respect to immigration enforcement. But the extent to which federal immigration agencies have violated the law under Trump is hardly new information.

In a ruling last month, Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the US District Court in Minnesota—a conservative jurist appointed by former President George W. Bush—provided a list of nearly 100 court orders ICE had violated just that month while deployed as part of Trump’s Operation Metro Surge.

The report of ICE’s systemic violation of the law comes as the agency faces heightened scrutiny on Capitol Hill, with leaders of the agency called to testify and Democrats attempting to hold up funding in order to force reforms to ICE’s conduct, which resulted in a partial shutdown beginning Saturday.

Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media

The post Courts Have Ruled That ICE Illegally Jailed People More Than 4,400 Times in Less Than Five Months appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Impeachment and ultimately removal from office are the means the people have to deal with their wayward, criminal representatives (Article II, Section 4 & Article I, Section 3, Clause 7 of the US Constitution).

Minnesota Rep. Pam Altendorf appears at the 19:05 mark and discusses failure to disclose the voter rolls.

Rep. Ben Davis appears at the 49:20 mark and is responsible for drawing up the Articles of Impeachment against Walz and now, has drafted them against Attorney General Keith Ellison.

Finally, Senator Eric Lucero appears at the 1:22:10 mark to discuss an amendment he proposed to deal with illegal aliens in the state of Minnesota.

Check out the show below.

Finally, keep in mind that Articles of Impeachment were filed against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in January.

In the process, Dean has been instrumental in stirring up these representatives and exhorting them to deal with these criminals before they are emboldened further in their crimes against the people.  It’s why we say The Sons of Liberty are turning talk radio into do radio.  Help support our efforts!

Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media

The post Articles Of Impeachment Are Filed Against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz & Now, They Are Drafted For Attorney General Keith Ellison – The Representatives Speak Out! (Video) appeared first on The Washington Standard.

In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, consolidated with Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to unilaterally impose sweeping tariffs of “unlimited amount, duration, and scope.” The ruling rejects the administration’s attempt to treat tariffs as emergency executive tools rather than congressional taxes. Since taking office, the Trump administration has collected more than $200 billion in tariff revenue — costs borne largely by American businesses and consumers. Critics have described the sweeping tariffs on nearly every one of America’s trading partners as stealth taxes on the American people.

“The Founders did not fight a revolution to replace one king’s taxes with another’s,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “Whether it’s tariffs, surveillance, or martial law, the pattern is the same: emergency powers become a back door for executive rule. The Constitution does not allow taxation by executive fiat.”

Under Article I of the Constitution, the power to levy taxes and regulate commerce with foreign nations belongs to Congress—the branch closest and most accountable to the people. Having just overthrown a monarchy that imposed taxes by decree, the Framers deliberately vested the “power of the purse” in the legislative branch to ensure that no president could tax or spend the nation into submission without the consent of the people’s representatives. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 58, “This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people.”

Beginning on the first day of his second term, President Trump issued a series of executive orders under declared national emergencies imposing sweeping “drug trafficking tariffs,” aimed at penalizing countries from which drugs allegedly flowed into the U.S., and “reciprocal tariffs,” aimed at addressing trade deficits. The administration relied on IEEPA, which authorizes the president to regulate certain foreign economic transactions to address “unusual and extraordinary” external threats.

The Supreme Court concluded that this statute does not extend to imposing tariffs — a core legislative function. During oral argument, Justice Gorsuch warned that the administration’s expansive reading of IEEPA risked creating a “one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people’s elected representatives.”

In dissent from the majority’s 6-3 ruling, Justices Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas suggested alternative statutory mechanisms that might support future tariff actions. Trump has already threatened to pursue other avenues to reimpose tariffs without congressional approval.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump is available at www.rutherford.org.

Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump: Supreme Court Opinion

Article posted with permission from John Whitehead

The post Supreme Court Rules President Cannot Tax by Decree, Strikes Down Use of ‘Emergency’ Powers to Impose Billions in Stealth Tariff Taxes appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Even After Supreme Court Ruling, Trump Insists He Can Do as He Wishes

The New York Times reports Even After Supreme Court Ruling, Trump Insists He Can Do as He Wishes

President Trump’s furious response on Friday to the Supreme Court’s tariffs decision underscored his insistence that he should be granted expansive powers to carry out his agenda as he wishes.

Lashing out after the court decided that he had exceeded his authority in imposing an array of tariffs over the last year, Mr. Trump labeled the justices who ruled against him “fools and lap dogs” and suggested that they had been corrupted by unspecified foreign influence and “slimeballs.”

“I’m ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” the president said. He suggested that Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, whom he nominated during his first term, were “an embarrassment to their families” because they sided with the majority against him.

The Trump administration has consistently criticized and sometimes defied lower court rulings that it does not like. Mr. Trump’s bitingly personal attacks on the highest court in the land on Friday appeared intended to undercut the authority of the justices to rein him in and highlighted his lack of deference to the constitutional separation of powers.

At the same time, Mr. Trump gave no indication that he would defy the court’s ruling, pivoting quickly to impose new tariffs using other, more constrained, mechanisms that are still available to him.

He said one set of trade powers, known as Section 122, would be used to impose an across-the-board 10 percent tariff, starting on Tuesday. And he said he would use another set of powers, Section 301, to open investigations into unfair trade practices, which could yield additional tariffs.

The president’s remarks on Friday were revealing about how he views Supreme Court justices, not as independent legal thinkers appointed for their expertise or as a constitutional check on his administration, but as appointees who should be loyal to him.

Until now, the court had been remarkably deferential to him, repeatedly allowing policies that have been challenged in court to go into effect while litigation proceeds. Friday was the first time the court has issued a final ruling on the legality of a piece of Mr. Trump’s agenda.

“Before the entire world, it was the president’s most spectacular display yet of his utter disrespect for the Constitution and his contempt for the Supreme Court of the United States,” J. Michael Luttig, a conservative retired federal appeals court judge, said in an interview.

And while the president ripped into the justices who opposed him, he lavished praise on those who sided with his administration.

“I’m so proud of him,” Mr. Trump said of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, whom he referred to as a “genius.”

Mr. Trump said the three justices who ruled in his favor were “happily invited” to his State of the Union address next week.

The others?

“They’re barely invited,” he said. “Honestly, I couldn’t care less if they come.”

Legal experts said Mr. Trump’s broadside against the court was remarkable.

“In my professional career, I don’t remember any president attacking judges in quite so personal way,” said Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge and former executive director of the Federal Judicial Center. “Presidents of both parties have been unhappy with major decisions. That’s not unusual and sometimes they’ll express pretty extreme disappointment about what the court did, but the name-calling in my experience is unprecedented.”

Q: What does “lap dog” mean in slang?
A: A weak person who is controlled by someone else. His coworkers regarded him as the boss’s lap dog.

Trump exactly wants fools and lap dogs on the Court.

Trump Is a Deliberate Con

This Matches Deliberate Con

Related Posts

February 20, 2026: Supreme Court Strikes Trump’s Reciprocal Tariffs In 6-3 Vote (I Told You So)

Forgive me for bragging, but I got every justice correct.

February 20, 2026: Trump Slams Supreme Court, Orders New 10 Percent Tariffs. How Easy Is That?

Trump has seven other tariff options. What are they?

Article posted with permission from Mish Shedlock

The post Trump Calls Supreme Court “Fools and Lap Dogs” After They Strike Down His Unlawful Tariffs, Then Thumbs His Nose By Issuing Tariffs appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Many of these soldiers served in Afghanistan, where it is now acknowledged that the U.S. military aided their local allies in “bacha bazi” (boy play): the practice of kidnapping and keeping boys as sex slaves, large numbers of whom were enslaved on U.S. military compounds.

MintPress News explores this dark and deeply disturbing topic.

Unspeakable Crimes

In August 2023, Joshua Glardon – a first sergeant in the 4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) at Fort Bragg – was sentenced to 76 years in prison, followed by lifetime supervised released, for the distribution of child pornography across the internet. An unnamed woman – his accomplice – was sentenced to 30 years in prison after she “confessed to allowing him to rape” her child.

Just two weeks later, Major Vincent Ramos was arrested at North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham International Airport on one count of statutory rape of a child younger than 15, seven counts of statutory sex offense with a child younger than 15, and two counts of indecent liberties with a child. A logistics officer based at Fort Bragg, he was later charged with two more counts of indecent liberties with a child.

And one month after that, in October 2023, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Stuart P. Kelly of the 82nd Airborne Division was sentenced to 16 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge after pleading guilty to raping and abusing a child under the age of 12. Kelly had made the child touch him and perform oral sex on camera.

Meanwhile, Staff Sergeant Carlos Castro Callejas was handed a 55-year jail term, a dishonorable discharge, and a demotion to the rank of private, after facing 13 charges of rape of a child under 12 years old.

All four of these men were not only based at Fort Bragg, but have served lengthy tours in Afghanistan. But they are merely the tip of a shockingly large iceberg of dozens of individuals from Fort Bragg who have been arrested on crimes related to abusing and trafficking minors.

According to investigative journalist Seth Harp, who uncovered a massive narcotics smuggling and distribution network run by elite military operators at the base in his book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces,” there has been a tenfold increase in such cases since 2021 and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But even more chilling is the choice of victims for these sexual predators; “I have not heard in years about one case of these special forces guys raping a woman. In the same time, I’ve heard about 15 cases of them raping children,” he told Abby Martin and Mike Prysner on the Empire Files podcast.

All this raises a plethora of serious questions about what is going on at the base, and what sort of dark and chilling secrets are being kept there.

“Laughing Off” Child Sexual Assault

A sprawling, city-sized base on the outskirts of Fayetteville, North Carolina, Fort Bragg is home to some 50,000 military personnel, making it one of the largest military installations anywhere in the world. It is home to many of the U.S.’ most elite organizations, including JSOC, Delta Force, the 3rd Special Forces Group, and the 82nd Airborne Division.

It also lies minutes away from I-95, the primary north-south interstate route on the American Eastern Seaboard. I-95 stretches from Miami in the south to the Canada/Maine border in the north, making it a crucial transport highway. Fayetteville is near its halfway mark. “It is a natural point, almost like a city that grew up upon the Silk Road in ancient times,” Anthony Aguilar told MintPress News, “It is a matter of fact that throughout this part of North Carolina, along the 95 corridor, there are vast amounts of sex trafficking and human trafficking in these areas. It is because of the accessible route from border to border that these things are trafficked or smuggled.” Anthony Aguilar is a former United States Army Lieutenant Colonel, Special Forces Green Beret, and a former Battalion Commander at Fort Bragg. In 2025, he became a whistleblower, revealing serious misconduct about U.S.- and Israeli-backed operations in Gaza.

He alleged that other commanders at Fort Bragg are well aware of the epidemic of child sex crimes, but “laugh about it or brush it off,” stating:

“Military leadership at the highest ranks are aware of what is happening, and they choose to cover it up. Not ignore it; they don’t ignore it. They acknowledge it. They choose to cover it up, because nobody wants to look like their unit is a bad and undisciplined unit. Nobody wants to look like troublemakers.” 

Aguilar shared with MintPress an example of this from was when he was a commander of the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg. A warrant officer was accused multiple times of sexually assaulting and abusing his stepdaughter – a minor – and producing pornography of these events. His chain of command decided not to do anything about it, but simply transfer him to Aguilar’s unit.

“He came to ours, and he did it again. My position on it was: court-martial, grand jury hearing, criminal case, criminal prosecution before a military judge,” he said. However, he was unable to carry this out as, “a three-star general circumvented my authority to charge him, and took that court-martial case up to his level, and then recanted those charges, and simply offered him a deal: ‘get out the Army and we won’t charge you criminally.’” The warrant officer took the deal, was discharged, and faced no criminal charges. Clearly disturbed by the event, Aguilar noted:

“That is why this continues to happen. That is why this is part of the culture. That is why these things continue to grow. It is because commanders at the highest level continue to hide it. They lie about it. And they do not hold those who do it accountable, in fear that it makes them look bad as a commander.” 

“Women Are For Children, Boys Are For Pleasure”

Many American soldiers and operators encountered a similarly widespread practice of child sexual assault in Afghanistan – and found a correspondingly permissive attitude from U.S. officials and military top brass.

The practice is called bacha bazi, a process by which men exploit and enslave adolescent boys, coercing them into cross-dressing, wearing makeup, dancing suggestively, and acting as sex slaves. The bachas (boys) are generally aged between nine and fifteen years old, and inordinately come from impoverished or vulnerable backgrounds. Many grew up in orphanages, are street children, or have been sold into slavery by relatives facing starvation. Others are simply abducted. Bacha Bazes (boy players) are typically older, wealthier men who consider the ownership of one or more young boys to be a status symbol, often giving them money and expensive clothing. In Afghanistan’s strictly gender segregated society, a common saying is that “women are for having children, boys are for pleasure.”

The United Nations has condemned bacha bazi. “It is time to openly confront this practice and to put an end to it,” Radhika Coomaraswamy, then Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, told the U.N. General Assembly in 2009. “Laws should be passed, campaigns must be waged and perpetrators should be held accountable and punished,” she added.

Although it had been known for centuries, occurrences in Afghanistan exploded in the 1980s with the ascendancy of the U.S.-backed Mujahideen government. It was briefly quashed under the Taliban (1996-2001), but returned again in the 21st century under the U.S.-protected Afghan government, made up of many of the same elements who were in power two decades previously.

How Washington Participated In Mass Child Sexual Slavery

The United States government actively tried to ignore the practice – an open secret in military and diplomatic circles. However, as it was withdrawing from the country, the State Department belatedly released a report admitting that, for nearly 20 years of occupation, there existed, “a government pattern of sexual slavery on government compounds.” U.S.-trained and funded authorities, it noted, “continued to arrest, detain, penalize, and abuse many trafficking victims, including punishing sex trafficking victims for ‘moral crimes’ and sexually assaulting victims who attempted to report trafficking crimes to law enforcement officials.” NGOs who helped the children, the report noted, advised them not to go to the police, as they were often the ones responsible for enslaving them in the first place.

Bacha bazi was primarily practiced by high-status individuals put in power by U.S. occupation forces – police, military, teachers, and government officials. Many of these people lived with their boys on U.S. compounds. This meant that, in practice, the U.S. taxpayer was subsidizing the widespread rape of children, one of the many reasons that American personnel were so unpopular with the local population, and why the U.S.-installed government fell within days of the 2021 military pullout. As Harp stated:

“The whole time that the U.S. was in Afghanistan, they were working with, protecting, funding, and arming guys who were systematically raping little boys, keeping them in chains on U.S. military bases – chained children on U.S. bases who were raped on a nightly basis! What can we even make of this? I struggle to wrap my mind around not only the evil of it, but how little anybody ever said about it.”

One example of the levels of depravity of the U.S.’ allies comes from Jordan Terrell, a former Fort Bragg paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne. At Forward Operating Base Shank in Logar Province in 2014, Terrell recalls seeing a group of young bachas running around the base. One, he noticed, “had something hanging out of his butt.” At first confused by the site, he later realized that what he saw was the child’s prolapsed anus from being repeatedly sodomized. “Dudes were exposed to that stuff so much,” he said, “The Afghan National Army, Afghan police… The contractors who cooked our food. Those guys raped children.”

Officially, Washington saw nothing. On 5,753 occasions between 2010 and 2016, the U.S. military was asked to review Afghan units to see if there were any gross human rights abuses noted. American law requires military aid to be cut off from any offending unit. On zero occasions did they report any abuses.

Yet bacha bazi was so widespread that virtually all U.S. personnel had heard about it. Aguilar stated that soldiers were relieved to make it to Friday every week, joking that: “It’s man-boy love Friday, so we are not going to get attacked very much today, because they are all having sex with their young boy concubines.”

The practice was as open as it was widespread. In 2016, an Afghan police commander invited a Washington Post journalist to his office for tea, where he gleefully showed off what he called his “beautiful boy slave.” The Afghan police were just one of a myriad of organizations the U.S. government sponsored during its 20-year, $2 trillion occupation of the country.

“I heard of it a number of times from both U.S. military and State Department officers throughout Afghanistan and in D.C., usually off-hand, with an exasperated what are you going to do type affect to their comments,” Matthew Hoh, a former U.S. Marine Corps Captain and State Department official told MintPress News, adding:

“It was clear that such crimes were not to be intruded upon. I doubt there was official paperwork to that effect, but it was clearly understood that we were to accept the rape of children as part of the bargain in our relationship with the Afghans we had put and kept in power.” 

In 2009, after growing increasingly disillusioned with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, Hoh resigned from his position at the State Department in Zabul Province.

Other Americans who tried to blow the whistle on the disturbing practice (and American complicity in it) ended up dead. One was Lance Corporal Gregory Buckley Jr., who was kept up at night by the shrieks of children being raped by Afghan police in rooms beside him at Forward Operating Base Delhi in Helmand Province.

Via a phone call, Buckley told his father that, from his bunk, “we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it.” His officers told him to “look the other way” because “it’s their culture.” It would be the last time his father heard Buckley’s voice, as he was murdered on the base days later by the very locals he was trying to train and protect.

Others who have taken matters into their own hands have had their careers destroyed by the military. Green Berets Captain Dan Quinn and Sergeant First Class Charles Martland found out that a local police commander in Kunduz Province had kidnapped a boy and was keeping him chained to the bed as a sex slave. After learning that she had turned to the Americans for help, the commander also beat up the boy’s mother. Quinn and Martland confronted him, but he laughed it off, telling them “it was only a boy,” after all. Incensed, the pair threw him to the floor, punched and kicked him.

Quinn was relieved of his command and sent back to the United States, where he left the military. Martland was originally going to be expelled from the Army, but, after a public backlash, he was quietly reinstated.

Drug Abuse, Child Abuse

The prevalence of Bacha bazi closely mirrors that of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The practice was far less common in the 1970s and 1980s, under the U.S.S.R.-backed, secular, Communist government. In an effort to overthrow the regime and bleed the Soviets dry, Washington spent $2 billion funding, training, and arming local Mujahideen militias (including Osama bin Laden). The Mujahideen seized control of Afghanistan in 1992, not long after the demise of the Soviet Union.

Presented as brave and gallant freedom fighters, the Mujahideen were lauded in the West. But, as in Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and much of the rest of the world, the U.S. so often allies itself with deeply unsavory movements in order to achieve its ends.

Not only were the Mujahideen religious reactionaries, but they displayed a conspicuous penchant for kidnapping and molesting children, and the practice exploded once they attained power.

Although bacha bazi was widely adopted by the Mujahideen, it was never accepted by much of the public, who saw it as barbaric and monstrous. Therefore, despite their depiction as the Afghan equivalent of the Founding Fathers in the Western press, many in Afghanistan saw their new rulers as little more than a gang of U.S.-imposed pedophile warlords.

The Mujahideen would be supplanted in only four years by the Taliban, who rose to power in no small part due to the nationwide revulsion and outrage over bacha bazi. Indeed, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban until his death in 2013, shot to fame due to his prominent opposition to the practice. In 1994, he led a group of armed men on a series of raids to rescue kidnapped and enslaved boys and girls.

The stunt made him a national hero, and greatly increased the Taliban’s strength and prestige. From a force of just 30 fighters, his militia grew to 12,000 by the year’s end, as thousands joined his cause, paving the way for their march on Kabul in 1996. Upon seizing power, the Taliban outlawed bacha bazi, making it punishable by death. Thus, while the Taliban are hardly known for their human rights policies, they were at least able to gain some public support through their actions to stamp out child rape.

This period, however, proved to be short-lived, as just five years later, in 2001, the United States would invade Afghanistan in order to topple the Taliban, putting in place many of the deposed Mujahideen figures from the previous regime. The return of the U.S.-backed government saw the reemergence of bacha bazi, with many top government, police and military officials flaunting their child concubines. This included even family members of President Hamid Karzai.

Likewise, drug production in Afghanistan directly correlates with U.S. involvement in the country. In the 1970s, heroin production was minimal, and largely for domestic consumption. But as the Western-backed regime change war dragged on, Washington looked for other ways to support the insurgency. They found their answer in opium, and soon, refineries processing locally-grown poppy seeds sprang up on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Trucks loaded with U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons entered Afghanistan from their ally, Pakistan, and returned filled to the brim with opium.

As Professor Alfred McCoy, author of “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade,” told MintPress,

“What the resistance fighters did was they turned to opium. Afghanistan had about 100 tons of opium produced every year in the 1970s. By 1989-1990, at the end of that 10-year CIA operation, that minimal amount of opium — 100 tons per annum — had turned into a major amount, 2,000 tons a year, and was already about 75% of the world’s illicit opium trade.”

The operation caused a worldwide boom in opium consumption, with heroin addiction more than doubling in the United States alone. The drug became a cultural touchstone, as illustrated in popular movies such as Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream. By 1999, annual production had risen to 4,600 tons.

Once again, the deeply religious Taliban stepped in to suppress the practice. A 2000 ban on opium cultivation led to a precipitous drop in production, with just 185 tons harvested the following year. Although the prohibition hit local farmers hard, it did begin to combat Afghanistan’s terrible opioid crisis, again gaining the Taliban some legitimacy with the local population.

Like with bacha bazi, though, the U.S. occupation reversed this trend. Under American supervision, opium production skyrocketed, reaching a high of 9,000 tons in 2017. Afghanistan became the world’s first true narco-state, with McCoy noting that by 2008, opium was responsible for well over half of the country’s gross domestic product. By comparison, even in Colombia’s darkest days, cocaine only accounted for around 3% of its GDP. More land in Afghanistan was under cultivation for opium than was used for coca across all of Latin America.

Many of those making fortunes from the business were the U.S.’ closest allies. This again included the Karzai family; the president’s brother, Ahmed Wali, was among the biggest and most notorious drugs kingpins in the region.

Shortly after coming back to power, the Taliban again banned the production of opium, sending teams of men across the country to eradicate poppy fields. In what even Western corporate media called “the most successful counter-narcotics effort in human history,” production fell by over 80% almost overnight, and has only continued to decrease since then. The speed and success of the operation raised serious questions about the United States’ true relationship with the global drug trade.

Taliban’s Massively Successful Opium Eradication Raises Questions About What US Was Doing All Along

An Incredibly Lucrative Business

Soldiers at Fort Bragg were closer than anyone else to the unseemly underbelly of the Afghanistan occupation. Units such as JSOC, Delta Force, the 3rd Special Forces Group and the 82nd Airborne Division worked closely with Afghan security forces, and had a front row seat to their activities.

“The Fort Bragg Cartel” uncovers a giant gun and drug trafficking network centered around the base, revealing how soldiers used military planes to sneak arms and narcotics into America, distributing them across the continent. Criminals in the U.S. military, Aguilar notes, have learned a great deal about trafficking and smuggling contraband, stating that:

“When you deploy as a military and you have all of your 90 cubic inch containers that get locked up will all your stuff in it. Those don’t get inspected when they fly back over on a military aircraft and land at Fort Bragg…[They learn] How easy it would be to transport and traffic weapons, drugs, and yes, even humans, back and forth, from country to country. It is all very doable. And it is all very lucrative.”

Military bases are the perfect smuggling operation centers. There is little oversight or inspection, and soldiers can move around the country from base to base, and are less likely to be stopped and searched by the police. A disproportionate amount of those soldiers convicted came from backgrounds in logistics, where they were trusted with transporting large shipments of goods to and from the U.S., all with minimal input or scrutiny from higher ups.

Selling guns and drugs is one thing. But trafficking and raping children is quite another. How could anyone consider engaging in such sickening behavior? And why has the practice exploded around Fort Bragg? For some, the answer was psychological: American troops, taught to dehumanize their enemies and exposed to child abuse on a daily basis come to see it as normal behavior. As Terrell suggested, “In some sick way…when they came back, maybe they just internalized it, and turned it into a sexual proclivity.”

There is, however, a simpler explanation: money. Some Fort Bragg soldiers stationed in Afghanistan and exposed to bacha bazi came back to the United States and see an opportunity to make huge amounts of money trafficking humans, and creating and selling child pornography.

“It is less of a matter of soldiers coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan and having this learned behavior of sexual deviance, child pornography, or abusing children, it is a learned behavior that child pornography and sex trafficking minors is very very profitable,” Aguilar said; “They see that, and they think, ‘This is really lucrative.’”

The Taliban have once again made bacha bazi a capital offense. It is unclear if the new law has suppressed the practice, or merely driven it underground. After all, Afghanistan’s sanction-hit economy means that the economic incentives for destitute families to sell their sons to rich officials are as pressing as ever. Moreover, there are reports that some Taliban commanders allegedly hold bachas themselves.

What is clear, however, is that the tactics and practices used by the United States military abroad are increasingly being used against the domestic population. From surveillance and militarized policing to increasing intolerance of dissent, civil liberties are being eroded by forces using techniques honed on subjects in Western Asia. In November, an Afghan commando and former member of a CIA-trained death squad, carried out a mass shooting in Washington, D.C.

While it is clear that the U.S. invasion destroyed Afghanistan, it also took its toll on America itself. The occupation directly contributed to the opioid crisis at home. And it appears that it is also connected to the epidemic of child sexual abuse documented here, as soldiers abuse children for profit. What has been happening at Fort Bragg, then, is part of the wider psychological degradation of American society, one that is controlled by a government that has sacrificed everything sacred to protect and advance its imperial ambitions.

Article posted with permission from MintPress News

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Methodology

Because the U.S. does not maintain a national firearm registry, and because factors such as privately manufactured firearms, theft, destruction, and long service life complicate tracking, modern estimates rely on manufacturing data, import records, FBI NICS trends, and national surveys, rather than exact inventories.

The following sections contain an exhaustive list of research, sourced from survey data over the past 20 years.. We compared the year-over-year self-reporting trends to NICS background checks and NSSF sales reports to analyze the number of guns in the U.S accurately.

Because FBI NICS data reflect background checks rather than individual firearms sold, totals are adjusted to remove denied transactions and account for permit-based background checks and multiple-firearm purchases. Estimates of permit-related checks in 2025 are based on observed national trends from 2023 to 2024, as the number of permit requests likely declined with Constitutional carry legislation in many states. As such, figures represent conservative estimates of retail firearm sales rather than exact transaction counts.

How Many Guns Are in America?

Based on available research, the United States is estimated to have 500 million civilian-owned firearms as of 2026. ^{1, 2, 9}

Most notably, the 2017 Small Arms Survey estimated 393 million firearms in the U.S. (46% of the world’s civilian-owned guns at the time).

Sharp increases in purchasing and manufacturing since 2020 (during and after the COVID-19 pandemic) have since added tens of millions of firearms to the civilian market. Although the exact number is unknown, 500 million guns is a reasonable estimate.

How Many Guns per Person in America?

There are about one and a half guns for every person in the U.S. in 2026. Minors are largely prohibited from possessing firearms, meaning there are nearly two guns per U.S. adult. ^{2, 8}

Population estimates for 2024 show that the U.S. has approximately 334 million people, of which 258 million are adults. Compared to our estimate of 500 million civilian-owned firearms, there are more guns than there are people in the country.

How Many Registered Gun Owners in the U.S.?

Per the most recent surveys, 32% of people in the U.S. (111.4 million) are gun owners. Americans generally do not register their firearms. Therefore, the number of registered gun owners in the U.S. is largely irrelevant.

A more accurate baseline of “registered” gun owners would be those with concealed carry permits. As of 2024, 20.88 million Americans held a concealed carry permit. While permits are not required in every state, they do reflect the share of U.S. adults who have formally acquired approval for concealed carry. ¹⁰

Note: Concealed carry permits are not an indicator of the number of gun owners in America. They are not required in all states.

How Many Illegal Guns in the U.S.?

There is no reliable estimate of how many illegal guns exist in the United States, but law enforcement data show that hundreds of thousands of stolen firearms and tens of thousands of unlawfully possessed guns are encountered each year.

Comparing law enforcement recoveries to the overall civilian firearm stock indicates that most firearms in the U.S. are legal, and “illegal” guns account for a small fraction of total guns in circulation.

While most firearms are not illegal, as defined, this section defines “illegal guns” as firearms that are unlawfully possessed or restricted under current law, including stolen firearms, privately manufactured firearms (PMFs) made or possessed illegally, and unregistered NFA weapons. Privately made firearms are not inherently illegal, but become unlawful when produced or possessed in violation of applicable laws.

• Stolen firearms: ATF and FBI data indicate that approximately 266,000 firearms are reported stolen annually. ⁶
• Illegally manufactured or unlawfully possessed PMFs: Law enforcement recovered about 92,700 PMFs between 2017 and 2023. Although trends show a substantial increase over time, this roughly averages 13,242 PMF seizures annually. ^{6, 7}
• Unregistered NFA firearms: ATF data indicate more than 11,000 illegal machine gun conversion devices and other unregistered NFA-regulated firearms were recovered between 2019 and 2024. This roughly averages 2,200 unregistered NFA seizures annually. ^{7, 8}

Notably, recoveries of illegally possessed PMFs have increased sharply in recent years, rising from fewer than 2,000 in 2017 to more than 25,000 in 2022, even though they continue to represent a minority of total crime guns traced by the ATF.

How Many Guns Per Household in America?

As of 2024, there were 123.6 million households in the U.S. The latest surveys reflect that 52% of American households have at least one firearm.

Current estimates show that 65,190,000 households in America have at least one firearm.

How Many Handguns in the U.S.?

Handguns account for the majority of firearms (55 to 60%) in the U.S. per manufacturing and sales data. Applied to our estimated 500 million firearms, there are approximately 255 to 280 million handguns in the U.S. in 2026. ^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}

Production data further illustrate the dominance of handguns over other firearm types in circulation. Between 1986 and 2012, U.S. manufacturers reportedly produced 49.5 million handguns, compared to 40.8 million rifles and 23.2 million shotguns, according to ATF manufacturing reports. By 2000, the ATF estimated there were already approximately 92 million handguns and 92 million rifles in civilian circulation, indicating that handguns had reached parity with rifles more than two decades ago.

More recent ownership data reinforce this trend. By 2017, surveys found that 72% of gun owners reported owning at least one handgun, making handguns the most commonly owned firearm type in the country. Because many handgun owners possess multiple firearms, the number of handguns in circulation substantially exceeds the number of handgun owners, contributing to the continued growth of the U.S. handgun stock.

Number of Guns Through the Years

The Small Arms Survey estimated 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the U.S. in 2017. When combined with sustained post-2020 purchasing, during which Americans acquired at least 1 million firearms per month for the past five years, and the growth of privately manufactured firearms, an estimate of roughly 500 million civilian-owned firearms is reasonable. ^{1, 2, 9}

Historical data support this trajectory. The ATF estimated 242 million firearms in circulation in 1996, rising to 259 million in 2000, 294 million in 2007, and over 310 million by 2009, before reaching 393 million by 2018. In total, more than 490 million firearms have been manufactured or imported for civilian use between 1899 and 2025, though this figure includes guns that may have been destroyed, lost, or otherwise removed from circulation. ^{3, 4, 9}

Interestingly, spikes in manufacturing and purchasing were prevalent just before the 1993 Brady Handgun Bill, after the expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, and during the pandemic.

Note: NICS-based purchase estimates assume a completed sale of one firearm and exclude permit substitutions and rechecks.

Wrap-Up

The United States has a significant number of firearms compared to most other countries, with current estimates suggesting there are around 500 million firearms in circulation. This translates to approximately one and a half firearms per person, making the U.S. unique in having more guns than people.

However, accurately determining the exact number of firearms is challenging due to factors such as unregistered guns, private sales, and reporting constraints. These complexities mean that the true number of firearms in the country could be higher than current estimates. This situation highlights the challenges in tracking gun ownership and distribution in the U.S., where the right to own firearms is both widely exercised and protected.

Sources

1. One Million Monthly Gun Sales Streak Ends at 71
2. Small Arms Survey 2018
3. ATF Number of Guns in 2000
4. ATF Firearms 1998-2012
5. ATF Ghost Guns 2022
6. DOJ Report on Ghost Guns and Unregistered Guns
7. ATF Trace Data
8. U.S. Household and Population Data
9. Firearms Commerce in the United States: Statistical Update 2024
10. Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States: 2025

Article posted with permission from Ammo.com

The post How Many Guns in the U.S.: All About America’s Firearms in 2026 (Video) appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Fox News has the story.

A comprehensive new briefing document from a prominent nonpartisan research and policy group is sounding the alarm on “serious ethical and national security concerns” related to Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her affiliations with individuals and organizations linked to designated foreign terrorist entities.

“The conduct of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, including her rhetoric, affiliations, campaign infrastructure, and ideological alignment with certain individuals and organizations, raises serious concerns about potential risks to the ethical and institutional integrity of the United States government,” the report, released by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy’s advocacy and policy-oriented arm, states.

The report details a “recurring pattern” of behavior that it says suggests an ideological affinity for radical movements, ranging from participation in conferences featuring convicted terrorists to significant campaign payments made to activists linked to Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-aligned networks.

The briefing covers Tlaib’s financial history and says her campaign apparatus poured large sums of cash to anti-Israel activists, including almost $600,000 between 2020 and 2025 to Unbought Power, a consulting firm headed by Rasha Mubarak.

Mubarak has faced scrutiny for her past affiliations with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial, and the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), which has been investigated for ties to the PFLP-linked group Samidoun.

Tlaib, according to the briefing, has shared the stage with a variety of questionable figures highlighted by a conference alongside Wisam Rafeedie, a convicted PFLP operative, who defended the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack as “resistance.”

“Through public endorsement, co-sponsorship, and amplification, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has consistently engaged with a range of organizations known to maintain operational or ideological ties to terrorist networks,” the briefing states. “Tlaib has engaged with and disseminated the messaging of these groups and has shared related content on social media platforms, has participated in events organized by these groups, and has referenced their terminology and conceptual frameworks in official congressional communications.”

FORMER BIDEN AIDE ACCUSES ‘SQUAD’ REP. TLAIB OF ABANDONING CONSTITUENTS FOR ‘ACTIVIST’ AGENDA

Tlaib is no stranger to being accused of promoting hostile foreign actors, and the House of Representatives has already taken formal action against the Michigan Democrat twice. 

She was first censured in November 2023 for promoting alleged false narratives regarding the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. A second resolution was introduced in September 2025 following her appearance at the “People’s Conference for Palestine,” where speakers allegedly “whitewashed” convicted Hamas financiers.

Tlaib’s language made another appearance in the briefing as ISGAP Action described antisemitic “tropes” used by the Michigan congresswoman on multiple occasions.

The report cites an August 2021 event where Tlaib referenced “people behind the curtain” making money off “racism” from “Gaza to Detroit.”

The briefing goes further than issuing warnings about Tlaib’s record and calls on government agencies to take specific action. 

The briefing calls for a formal congressional inquiry into Tlaib’s conduct that specifically reviews her public statements that allegedly align with terrorist organizations, her attendance at events honoring convicted terrorists and a thorough review of her campaign fundraising sources.

Additionally, the briefing asks the Department of Justice’s National Security Division to conduct a legal review to determine if Tlaib or her affiliates have violated 18 U.S. Code §2339B, which prohibits providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations.

The Federal Election Commission, according to the briefing, should perform a forensic audit of Tlaib’s campaign finances focusing on donations from individuals tied to terror networks.

“Tlaib’s conduct demonstrates how extremist ideologies can infiltrate mainstream democratic institutions,” the report concludes. “If left unchecked, her actions will continue to legitimize hate.”

Last year, Tlaib’s name came up in another ISGAP Action report that highlighted what it called a multi-generational campaign by the Muslim Brotherhood to “transform Western society from within” and covertly infiltrate the United States. 

“The election and re-election of congresswomen such as Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who have openly defended positions aligned with Brotherhood perspectives on Israel, counterterrorism, and international relations, demonstrates the intersection of identity politics and Brotherhood narratives,” the report stated.

“While neither congresswoman has a documented formal affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, both have appeared at events organized by Brotherhood-aligned organizations, have received campaign support from Brotherhood-aligned donors, and have consistently advocated positions aligned with Brotherhood objectives.”

Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media

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