We live in frightening times. In Boston, a college student who appears to have been radicalized online may face lethal injection for his alleged role in a terrorist attack that left four people dead and more than 260 wounded. Just a few months ago, in Connecticut, a young man killed 20 young children and six adults before shooting himself with one of numerous guns borrowed from his motherâs arsenal.
While America is searches its soul, attempting to make sense of these and other horrific attacks that have rocked the nation with disturbing regularity over the last several years, gun rights absolutists have flooded the Internet and airwaves with wild-eyed talk of sinister government plans to undermine the Second Amendment and disarm harmless American patriots.
At the bottom of the barrel are those who seek to profit off these national tragedies. Thatâs where youâll find Caleb Lee, a veteran huckster who has partnered with WorldNetDaily, Glenn Beck and others to offer anyone with $27 information on how to built a completely untraceable AR-15 assault rifle in the comfort of their own garage.
Lee is the proprietor of UndergroundAssaultRifle.com, a Virginia-based business whose sole product is a set of videos and do-it-yourself manual which purports to tell purchasers everything they need to know about crafting copies of the assault rifle used recently in massacres in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo.
A self-described âred-blooded Americanâ and proud âcapitalistâ (not, he emphasizes in his online ad, âa âspread the wealthâ socialist like those fools in the Whitehouse for crying out loudâ), Lee has partnered with far-right media outfits including the online ânewsâ site WorldNetDaily (WND) and Glenn Beckâs TV network and website, TheBlaze, to promote his new business. As of Thursday evening, WND, whose editors never met a conspiracy theory they didnât like, featured a link to Leeâs ad on its front page, where it shared space with headlines warning direly of a âSaul Alinsky plot to vilify gunsâ and speculating that the nasty weather that scuttled plans to hoist a spire to the top of theWorld Trade Center on Monday was sent by an angry God to punish America for abandoning Him.
Beckâs site, meanwhile, featured its own front-page link to Leeâs ad (âSee how to get an untraceable AR-15 before itâs bannedâ), along with a promotion for his upcoming keynote address at this weekendâs National Rifle Association (NRA) convention in Houston, a video about âObamaâs private army,â a think piece on whether the late Ronald Reagan would have supported gay marriage, and a âmust-readâ item about the âmysterious Jesus-era stoneâ thatâs sparked âmajor debate among scholars.â
Lee, whose site is emblazoned with WND and TheBlazeâs logos, fits right in. His long-winded ad is replete with references to âcrooks and fat cat lobbyistsâ in Washington, who together with their friends, the âpower-hungry anti-gun puppets,â are even now âmaking serious headway at turning the country against Second Amendment supporters like us.â (âSerious headwayâ? Last time we checked, about 90% of Americans supported some kind of restriction on gun rights, but the U.S. Senate â which supposedly represents them â couldnât overcome pressure from the gun lobby to muster the votes necessary to pass the most innocuous of gun control proposals.)
Near the beginning of his pitch, Lee warns watchers who âthink Iâm some far right wacko who is making a big deal out of âcommon senseâ gun control lawsâ to âLEAVE this page right now.â
We stayed anyway.
Leeâs pitch is simple. He explains that the key component of an AR-15 is a part called the âstripped receiver,â which holds the guts of the weapon â âthe actual part of the AR-15 thatâs considered the âfirearmâ by the ATF.â Stripped receivers are hard to come by these days, and they are typically manufactured with serial numbers. But Lee claims to have uncovered a source that sells unfinished receivers, which, âbecause they still need some holes drilled and other modifications ⊠[are] NOT considered firearms by any authority!â
Channeling Wayne LaPierre, the NRAâs increasingly unhinged executive vice president, Lee urges his fellow Americans to stand against the governmentâs âjack-booted thugsâ by buying his system today.
âUnderground Assault Rifle is a simple, step-by-step system that puts YOU in control of your Second Amendment rights and frees you forever from slavery and servitude to the lawmakers in Washington ⊠so you can protect your home and family no matter what happens,â Lee boasts in his ad. Buy today and youâll get six videos, a how-to manual, and a âspecial reportâ on âthe only place to hide your guns that the government will never find!â
This apparently isnât Leeâs first rodeo. When Hatewatch typed his name into Google, the search engineâs helpful auto-complete function suggested we might be looking for âCaleb Lee superdiet scam.â It appears that a couple of years ago, Lee irritated customers who bought the first few books in his âsuperdietâ scheme by sending repeated E-mails insisting that they purchase additional items from his online store.
UndergroundAssaultRifle.com, which Lee registered just this Feb. 19, does not have an online reputation to speak of.
Not yet, anyway. But a quick perusal of a portion of Leeâs do-it-yourself manual suggests that buyers who shell out $27 for Leeâs âsystemâ may be disappointed â not least because, like most information these days, itâs available for free online. As it turns out, Lee doesnât offer direct access to suppliers at all. Rather, he rather instructs readers to use Google to search for unfinished stripped receivers, jury-rig a drill press and use it as a mill. (A word to the wise: A 2002 discussion thread on an AR-15 fan site suggests that using a drill press to machine an AR-15 is a very, very bad idea which could result in injury to both you and your drill press.)
Lee suggests that his readers use the Internet to buy or barter for the remaining parts of their homemade assault rifle. Easy as pie, right?
Lee thinks so. âAt this point, thereâs really only three simple choices. … You can bury your head in the sand [and]Â continue ignoring my warnings and my offers of help and still be stuck without a AR-15 that is 100% âoff the booksâ â FOREVERâ; âYou can try to figure all this out [on] your ownâ; or âyou can TAKE CONTROL of your life and get the guidance and advice Iâm offering,â he writes.
âDo that now, and Iâll see you on the other side in just minutes!â Signing off, âFor our freedoms, Caleb Lee.â