Texas 'Gunfluencer' Poised to Represent Uvalde

A YouTube gun star with a history of misogynistic remarks and inflammatory jokes about mass shootings and Nazis could soon be the voice of Uvalde and El Paso in Congress. Brandon Herrera, 30, known online as "The AK Guy," has built a 4.27 million–subscriber channel around maximalist gun rights and "edgy" humor—including a 2019 video, posted days after the El Paso Walmart massacre, arguing Americans should be "glad" mass killers use guns instead of deadlier tools, the Guardian reports. The Republican candidate is the frontrunner in Texas' 23rd Congressional District, a sprawling, majority-Latino border seat that includes both El Paso's outskirts and Uvalde.

Online, Herrera frequently targets women he disagrees with, using porn-derived insults and remarks about their weight, CNN reports. He has called a Nazi-era gun the "original ghetto blaster" and posted a video of himself goose-stepping to a Nazi marching song. In 2024, when he challenged Rep. Tony Gonzales in the GOP primary, the Republican Jewish Coalition denounced him as "goose-stepping extremist." He won the primary this year after Gonzales dropped out amid a sex scandal.

Herrera's brand, embraced by supporters like Kyle Rittenhouse, has filled part of the vacuum left by a weakened NRA, the Guardian reports. Gun safety advocates and some Republicans warn that his "Second Amendment absolutism" could shape national firearms policy, even as polls show broad Texas support for measures he opposes, like red-flag laws and raising the AR-15 purchase age.

• On Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson described some of Herrera's remarks about Nazis as "detestable language," Politico reports. "But I also know Brandon Herrera has been out running a very effective campaign and explaining to people that he has apologized for all that," Johnson added. "He was a podcaster and a provocateur and tried to get attention." When the Democratic House Majority PAC posted the goose-stepping video on X in March, however, Herrera remarked, "I standby it, this s--- was funny as hell."