Brandon Herrera: Even more extreme than the NRA

SAN ANTONIO — As the National Rifle Association (NRA) gathers in Houston for its Annual Meeting, GIFFORDS Texas, the Texas chapter of national gun violence prevention organization founded by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, highlighted the dangerous and extreme record of Texas congressional candidate and “GunTuber” Brandon Herrera, known online as The AK Guy. Herrera is a rare candidate who has openly criticized the NRA for being too soft in its advocacy against popular laws to stop gun crime. 

“If voters in West Texas are tired of their congressman making national news for all the wrong reasons, they need to run far away from Brandon Herrera. No one who makes their money imitating Nazis and mocking dead veterans deserves a seat in Congress. Period,” said GIFFORDS spokesperson Chris Harris. “It remains to be seen if Brandon Herrera will show his face at the NRA Annual Meeting given the criticism he has lobbed at the group for not being radical enough. Herrera is a gun extremist who cares more about lining his own pockets than commonsense laws that keep guns away from criminals. It’s no coincidence that he was recruited into politics by an infamous gun radical who thinks firearm background checks are as bad as the Holocaust.”

Herrera has made headlines for mocking veterans who suffer from mental health crises and die by suicide. According to the San Antonio Current, Herrera joked, “If it makes everyone in the room feel better, I often think about putting a gun in my mouth. So, I’m basically an honorary veteran.” As Steven Kling, former U.S. Army captain and GIFFORDS Gun Owners for Safety Senior Ambassador, said when the interview surfaced, “Mr. Herrera may choose to be a jerk to impress his toxic internet friends, but the Texans I know honor those who served. Our men and women in uniform deserve better from all of us, but especially from someone who wants to serve in Congress. This degenerate will never understand that kind of sacrifice and I certainly hope will never hold that office.”

Herrera became well known for his YouTube channel “replete with imagery, music and jokes about the Nazi regime and the Holocaust.” Jewish Insiderdescribed, “In one video from 2022, he shows off the MP-40, a submachine gun developed in and widely used by Nazi Germany. He refers to it, seemingly jokingly, as ‘the original ghetto blaster’ — apparently alluding to the Nazis’ killing of Jews… [Herrera was] goose-stepping and showing off other Nazi weaponry, set to the song ‘Erika,’ which was popularized as a Nazi marching song and which has seen frequent use in modern neo-Nazi and far-right propaganda… Later in the video, before firing the weapon into a case of beverages, Herrera yells, ‘Gestapo right there.’” It’s no wonder even fellow Republicans have criticized Herrera as a “goose-stepping extremist who pals around with online Nazis.” 

The National Association for Gun Rights is one of Herrera’s largest financial backers, having donated $10,000 to Herrera’s two congressional campaigns. The group’s president, extremist Dudley Brown, told the New York Times he worked to “drag” Herrera to become more politically engaged and personally promised Herrera “If you run, we’ll dump money into it.” Brown has been making headlines for gun extremism for decades. After the shooting at Columbine High School, he said to CNN of the background checks being considered, “We feel like the Jews did in Nazi Germany.” Following passage of laws after the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Brown said it was “time to hunt Democrats.”