• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, January 17, 2013

After President Obama vowed to get tough on gun laws, and since at least a few Republicans seem to be open to the idea, I’ve been looking at some of pro-gun video sites around that would offer the inevitable pushback.

But a sideshow may be doubly newsworthy. FPSRussia,com one of YouTube’s top ten sites (over 3 million subscribers) and features videos of a host, Kyle Myers, who in a fake, heavy Russian accent, uses super high-powered weapons to enthusiastically blow up things.  FPSRussia  (“FPS” stands for “first person shooter,” a video gaming term. ) videos have been seen 542 million times. Incredible.  In videos, dummies are exploded, cars are exploded. Things (no live things) get shot, gleefully and sometimes in slo-mo.

Not long after the Newtown murders, Myers experimented with the “DRD-Paratus-18”  a semi-automatic that can be neatly folded up and packed into a suitcase. “The fact that it’s so compact, this big long thing goes into a backpack! I absolutely love this thing. I’m going to start carrying this around a lot more,” he enthused. (To say  “gushed”  would just be confusing.)

This video has been seen 2,455,051 times since Jan 3. Every other video on the site featured pre-roll advertising for the (seems-to-be) violent film “Parker” that opens Jan. 25. The film’s marketers went to the right place, I’d say. (Myers once pretended to make a Russian-tinged music video containting this lyric repeated over and over: "Guns! Violence! Explosions! And Whores.")

The  “double newsworthy” aspect about FPSRussia is that on Jan. 3, the same day that video was posted,  Keith Ratliff, who operated the site, was found dead in his office in Carnesville, Ga., shot once in the head.

No one has been arrested for the murder, but it appears that whoever did it knew him because although Ratliff, who had recently moved there from Kentucky and  worked on repairing and customizing weapons, didn’t appear to defend himself. The place was loaded with weapons, as you might expect.

Invariably, there was speculation that Ratliff may have been a black ops victim, executed for his pro-gun/pro-fun site.  

Obviously, I have nothing to add to that speculation, though on the Internet, lack of information is no barrier to saying whatever you want.  On YouTube and Facebook, there are several tributes to Ratliff—nice ones, not nutty-- and many of those videos also carry pre-roll for “Parker.”

But on some Web sites, the now-routine suspicions these cases cause in the Glen Beck era surfaced.

“Although I have no proof, my inclination is to suspect that the Obama administration or one of its surrogates is responsible for Ratliff’s death, the first of many such executions that will take place in order to silence individuals whom the government deems a threat to their oligarchical collectivist agenda,” said one blogger, Erik Rush.  

Another Website, Infosalvo.com  (Its motto:“Treading on the new world order”) says, “The radio and media at large isn’t mentioning the exact details, however this is a very important thing. FPSRussia is a driving force in the pro-gun movement concerning youth. The videos published are very pro-gun, and reach literally millions of impressionable youth showing them that firearms just aren’t for people in movies or video games. From the details, it was not a robbery turned murder. His guns were still left in the house. So, why was he murdered mob style?”

If you go trolling YouTube and the Internet in general, these days, you’ll also come across Cam Edwards with “NRA News” and that new, truly tone-deaf NRA commercial that criticizes President Obama for being an elitist hypocrite for not endorsing armed guards in schools when, the ad points out,  his daughters get armed guard protection at school. The noise you hear is the sound of the rumble  between the First and Second amendments.

pjbednarski@comcast.net