Orange County's very own Adam Gadahn, the weird kid who grew up on a Riverside goat farm before converting to Islam and joining Al Qaeda after being kicked out of a Garden Grove mosque, is apparently still alive. The terrorist group's so-called “American” face is featured in a brand new video in which the bearded blabbermouth urges his brainwashed followers to exploit our nation's gun laws in the name of mass murder.
“America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms,” Gadahn lectures his audience, his voice accompanied with footage of rows of weapons at a U.S. gun shop. “You can go
down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a
fully automatic assault rifle without a background check and, most
likely, without having to show an identification card. So what are you
waiting for?”
]
The video is the first one of Gadahn to surface since the death of Osama bin Laden. His first video appearance–in which he appeared with a scarf around his face–was in 2004, when he predicted terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that would rival 9/11. Later, Gadahn took off the scarf to reveal a pudgy face and fluffy beard and scolded Americans for being a nation of infidels. Thanks to these tapes, Gadahn became the first American since World War II to be accused of treason and now has a $1 million bounty on his head.
The story of Gadahn's bizarre transformation from death-metal fan-boy to radical Muslim is well-known to longtime OC Weekly readers, but for a refresher course, you can read more about that here.
In the wake of Gadahn's latest video, groups like Change.org and Amnesty USA are calling for the closing of legal loopholes that allow nutcases to easily obtain semi-automatic rifles. There's an online petition you can sign right here to help get that cause moving. (The site has a link to Gadahn's video on YouTube, but it appears to have been taken down for violating the video-sharing website's terms of use.) Meanwhile, one can easily imagine why Gadahn would be so interested in U.S. firearms. If the raid on his closet-case couch potato of a leader bin Laden is any indication, it's likely the barrel of one such weapon will be the last thing Gadahn ever sees.
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).