A leading gun control advocate on Thursday led criticism of a newly released highly compact AR-15-style semi-automatic weapon being marketed as a tool to oppose government and Big Tech “censorship.”

Boonville, Missouri-based CMMG calls its new DISSENT model its “most stowable” offering. The company says the 4.6-pound, 14-inch gun, which is sold without a brace (or stock), “boasts superior firepower in a small familiar package and will initially be offered in three different calibers,” including NATO-standard 5.56 x 45 mm. By adding an aftermarket brace, owners can transform what CMMG calls a pistol into a short-barreled rifle.

“The DISSENT is more than a product,” the gun’s “mission statement” claims. “It is a platform to voice our peaceful opposition to the censorship and infringements that affect law-abiding gun owners across America.”

CMMG also claims the gun is opposition to “Big Tech unjustly silencing” Second Amendment advocates, “erasing their First Amendment rights and the idea of democracy in the process.”

Ryan Busse—an avid outdoorsman and hunter and former firearms executive-turned industry whistleblower, author, and activist—noted that the perpetrator of the March 2021 massacre of 10 people in a Boulder, Colorado supermarket “used one of these type guns made by Ruger.”

Companies like CMMG figured out they could cheat the law by making a pistol-ar15 and then marketing add-on brace (or stock) to allow the buyer to turn it into a rifle. And…they decided to market the gun as some sort of Christian Nationalist Statement (note Lord’s Prayer on arm) pic.twitter.com/19IzNdXgKD

— Ryan Busse (@ryandbusse) June 16, 2022

Busse asserted that the CMMG DISSENT is “not just any AR-15. This gun is one of a growing number of ‘pistol brace’ guns that are meant to evade the regulation set forth in the 1934 National Fireams Act that strictly regulated ‘short-barreled rifles.'”

“Moreover, the gun is being marketed as a way to resist tyrannical government,” he continued. “Not-so-subtle language about buying this gun to use in some sort of holy civil war is right on their website. Note that like [former U.S. President Donald] Trump, they slip in ‘peaceful’ as if an attorney advised it at last minute.”

“Assuming marketing works and assuming these people are serious about using these guns to make some sort of armed patriotic ‘statement,’ I hope no one is surprised when the next horrific event hits the news,” Busse added.

Republished with permission from Common Dreams, by Brett Wilkins