The term "violent extremists" isn't what it once was. It's hard to recognize such a term when it's used to describe people peacefully protesting while it's not used for people burning down neighborhoods and calling for law enforcement to be defunded or eradicated.

But a lot of people don't really follow that. They see the news and trust the journalists for some silly reason, or they trust the government when they tell them something, for some equally silly reason.

Those folks figure "violent extremists" are people who will use violent actions to potentially hurt or kill people in pursuit of a cause that simply can't win in the legislatures.

So if you find you're part of a group that's been lumped in with violent extremists, you might get a bit miffed.

Prepare for miffage, ladies and gentleman, as it seems we humble gun rights supporters are akin to actual violent extremists according to the federal government.

Federal law enforcement lumped together conservative positions on guns and immigration with violent extremism in guidance given to financial institutions to help them monitor people’s transactions, a congressional investigation found.

The House Judiciary Committee and its Weaponization Subcommittee released a report Wednesday detailing the efforts by federal agencies and large financial institutions to surveil Americans’ private financial transactions in the wake of the January 6 protests.

Soon after the Capitol protests, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) created an intelligence document, “Domestic Violent Extremists Likely Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach,” and the FBI shared the file with financial institutions to help them profile potential domestic extremists, according to the report. The FBI also sent the intelligence document to other private companies with membership in the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), an FBI and DHS portal that includes more than 650 large private companies. 

“This FBI intelligence product, along with other materials shared by federal law enforcement, detail the extent to which federal law enforcement derisively viewed American citizens,” the report states.

“Federal law enforcement used this report and materials like it to commandeer financial institutions’ databases and ask the financial institutions to conduct sweeping searches of individuals not suspected of committing any crimes.”

The intelligence brief suggested that outside “pressures” prompting domestic violent extremists (DVEs) to engage in political violence including “firearm legislation, the easing of immigration restrictions, and new limits on the use of public land.”

Basically, anyone who isn't on the left is some kind of domestic terrorist.

Hell, a number of people who are on the left likely qualify as well because many of them aren't thrilled about illegal immigration or actually support gun rights.

Yet the deeper problem here is that these are all legitimate issues that some people are going to feel differently about. Some people want total gun bans and some of us want to be able to order an F-22 on Amazon. I'm in the Amazon camp, but most people fall somewhere in between.

To say that people who oppose gun control are somehow akin to domestic extremists is a problem, particularly since we've seen plenty of violence from the other side of the aisle, or has everyone forgotten the George Floyd riots in 2020?

I'm not really thrilled to see the federal government try to enlist my bank and credit card companies to help them deal with "extremism" and then using a definition that may well lump a lot of people, myself included, into that camp, all because I refuse to go along with President Joe Biden's domestic agenda.

And really, that is the definition, isn't it? All of those things are points the Biden administration has harped on, and that many people oppose, and those that do are violent extremists.

Elections have consequences, so remember this when you go to the ballot box in November.