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Beth Payne laughed out loud at the suggestion that the AR-15s and AK-47s she and other members of the Phoenix John Brown Gun Club were toting a week or so back at the Arizona Capitol were AirSoft replicas of the real thing.
“They do make AirSoft guns that look like real guns,” Payne, 35, said during a recent interview at Phoenix’s Fair Trade Cafe. “But it seems like a stupid way to get shot by a cop, waving a gun that’s a toy.”
This conjecture emanated from right-leaning critics following a Facebook Live video I shot on March 25 of 40 or so radicals with rifles, who were counter-demonstrating at a pro-Trump Make America Great Again march that ended on the lawn of the state Senate.
The footage went viral, bolstered by links from prominent conservative sites, such as The Daily Caller and Glenn Beck’s The Blaze. It also caught the attention of far-right militias, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and various so-called “patriot” groups.