Image source: TheBlaze
A California man has been banned from Twitter after creating a video of himself shooting an effigy of Parkland student David Hogg for target practice.
The man, identified by Newsweek as Frank Espinoza, can be seen at a what appears to be a shooting range, wearing a black "Make America Great Again" hat and clad in black clothing.
He can be seen picking up one of three firearms lying on a workbench and turning to address the camera.
"I got a message for David Hogg, the b**** at CNN," he said. "You want to push society to civil war? You want to make us all fight? You want to see what a civil war looks like? I'm going to show you what a civil war looks like, David."
Espinoza goes on to fire no less than 10 rounds at his target, bears an oversized cutout of Hogg's head sitting atop the target.
Espinoza shared the video to Twitter on Wednesday, which marked Hogg's 18th birthday.
Twitter removed the video shortly after it was posted and banned Espinoza's account.
See the video below.
Just because twitter suspended him, it does not mean the @FBI should not have a chat with him.
here is the video before the account was suspended.
He goes by LAWEREWORLF pic.twitter.com/EMm9Ha6P2X
— ALT- Immigration (@ALT_uscis) April 12, 2018
Newsweek reports that Espinoza is a "a far-right, California-based YouTube performer" who has "made efforts to build a career for himself in the self-made punditry business of the alt-right movement."
He received a ban from YouTube as a result of previous inflammatory behaviors on the platform.
In an interview with Newsweek, Espinoza said that by crafting the video, he was merely making a statement about "small content creators" being banned from YouTube, and noted that he believed Hogg was intimidating those on the right with his gun control-promoting tactics.
"I'm a performance artist," Espinoza said. "I wanted to see the trajectory of where this [internet censorship] was going."
When Newsweek asked Espinoza "if the video could be used to inspire violence against Hogg or someone like him," Espinoza quipped, "It's possible."
"[Hogg is] exploiting his platform," he added.
Fellow Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass killing survivor Sarah Chadwick reacted and shared her sentiments of the video on Twitter.
She wrote, "If you take a cardboard cutout of a teenage shooting survivor and use it as target practice, you should not have a gun."
If you take a cardboard cutout of a teenage shooting survivor and use it as target practice, you should not have a gun. https://t.co/F8oCsDRPWq
— Sarah Chadwick (@Sarahchadwickk) April 12, 2018
Many others rallied to report Espinoza to Twitter, and some even called for reports to be filed with the FBI.
At the time of this writing, Hogg himself has yet to publicly comment on the matter.