You must watch this short video clip of Paul Birdsong, at a protest shortly after ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed Renee Nicole Good, in which he offers a strongly worded warning to ICE while legally armed with a semi-automatic shotgun. Birdsong—who identifies as a member of the Philadelphia Black Panther Party for Self-Defense—did not come to play and does not mince words. The transcript is below, but I encourage you to take 75 seconds to watch it. The overtly violent imagery may drive MAGA headlines, but it’s the underlying message that’s important to hear.

A Black man with a gun scares people—recall that after the original Black Panther Party called “for Black people to arm themselves,” the NRA strongly supported gun control—and Birdsong’s unabashedly aggressive language has sparked performative outrage from the likes of Infowars. It worries me that Birdsong and the other members of his group are putting themselves in harm’s way and might soon be targeted by ICE or another government agency—or MAGA agitators—even though I agree that a legally armed group of citizens can prevent ICE escalations and protect the public.

Isn’t this what Second Amendment advocates have been preaching for decades?

Here’s the transcript:

Won’t no ICE agent ever run up on me. I guarantee you they won’t, I’ll put a hole in their chest the size of a window. “Safelite repair, Safelite replace.” That’s what’s gonna happen if they touch me.

Unarmed woman was killed by ICE. If you think you about to come and brutalize the people while we’re standing here—fuck around and find out.

Our interactions with the police and ICE, and—we hold them accountable. We hold them accountable. We patrol the community, and we hold them accountable.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, we’re the same Panther Party from back in the day, but we’re a little more aggressive now, you dig, carry bigger guns, and we don’t take no shit.

Places where there are a lot of immigrants at, I think that the community around them needs to take special care to them, and needs to start escorting them to and from everywhere to make sure that they’re safe. Because them ICE agents ain’t gonna act like that if it’s a bunch of people standing outside with assault rifles and shotguns.

It’s a semi-automatic shotgun. That means them shotgun shells that shoot out of a pump, this shoots them rapidly. If you are gonna legally arm yourself, arm yourself with something bigger than what they got. Those who serve in the public, they should be fearful of the public. They should be fearful that the public’s gonna be dissatisfied with their job that they’re doing, not feeling like they’re tyrants, not feeling like they’re bullies, because they got guns and body armor and walkie-talkies, that makes them immune to whatever the people would do.

I think you want to correct the ideology of the pig and the mentality of the slave catcher, you meet them with equal force.

All power to the motherfucking people. (No power to the pigs.)

The Philadelphia Inquirer has more on Birdsong and this iteration of the Black Panther Party. Birdsong has previously identified himself as the national chairman of the Party, a claim some disputed. The group has since changed its name to The Black Lion Party For International Solidarity.