This arrest news in Pomona, California is pretty straightforward.

“Chen provided the (undercover agent) with instructions regarding how to install an auto sear on the Glock handgun, and demonstrated how…the handgun would operate as a fully automatic firearm.”

The interesting details come next, about a lack of maturity (insecurity/fear coupled with a lack of concern for others) in the American gun fetish cult known as Boogaloo.

Brian Levin, the director for the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, said the Boogaloo movement is particularly dangerous because its only central ideology is violence as a means to destroy, most often, the U.S. government, but also any kind of authority its members oppose.

Levin said Boogaloo adherents typically fetishize weapons and oppose gun laws of any kind. While the overwhelmingly majority of Boogaloo members have hung around hard right groups for years, they don’t fall neatly along mainstream political lines.

And while they can come from any background, Levin said Boogaloo members have typically had aggression issues for years that sent them down social media rabbit holes of violent ideologies, most often on Facebook.

What separates Boogaloo from other movements, however, is an edge of internet savvy humor, using jokes to promote hatefulness.

Calling hate a joke is a widespread tactic used to avoid accountability and point of comparison, not really a separation from other groups. It is what most toddlers might be expected to do, for example, revealing the mental state of Boogaloo members.

Here’s a similar story from Pomona, California, showing how this sometimes plays out earlier in life.

A middle school student who was arrested this week after allegedly threatening violence against two Pomona campuses in a social media post told police it was intended as a joke, authorities said.

The online post contained a threat to “shoot up” Marshall Middle School and Ganesha High School on Wednesday, according to a Pomona Police Department news release.

Remember the “aggression issues for years” in the Levin analysis above?

Children often don’t fall neatly along mainstream political lines because they haven’t developed their sense of place. Likewise they often claim to be just playing or joking. Maturation doesn’t have to mean mainstreaming, but such false claims to be joking end where responsibility and accountability grow.

A gun worshiping cult of violent undeveloped minds in America is not something to take lightly, given it’s a serious regression to primitive thinking driven by feeling (fear) instead of logic (justice).

Related:

1) “In 1946, his physician and a Baltimore psychiatrist, after examination, both concluded [violent gangster Al] Capone then had the mentality of a 12-year-old child.”
2) Lord of the Flies, the 1954 debut novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding.