In his latest video, Colion Noir argues that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has become a near-perfect example of what gun-rights advocates mean when they talk about political hypocrisy on firearms. Noir’s central point is blunt: Johnson supports strict limits on rifles owned by ordinary citizens while benefiting from a massive, taxpayer-funded armed security presence of his own.
According to Colion, that contrast is not a side issue. It is the story.
He opens by saying Johnson is protected around the clock by 150 armed Chicago police officers, a security footprint Noir says costs taxpayers roughly $30 million a year. At the same time, he notes, the mayor has publicly backed Illinois’ ban on so-called assault-style weapons and praised court decisions that keep those restrictions in place.
That is where Noir says the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
A mayor who is surrounded by heavily armed protection, he argues, is telling ordinary residents they do not need the rifle of their choice for lawful self-defense. In Colion’s words, that is not a glitch in the system. It is the system working exactly the way powerful people want it to work.
The Report That Set Off Noir’s Reaction
Noir says the immediate trigger for his video was a report from the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
He points specifically to Lawrence Keane, the group’s senior vice president and general counsel, whom he says laid out what is happening in Chicago in stark terms. According to Noir, Keane’s report says Mayor Johnson’s armed detail is made up of as many as 150 Chicago Police Department officers and costs the public about $30 million per year.
Colion lingers on that number for a reason.
To him, 150 officers is not just a routine mayoral protection package. He calls it a small army. That phrase is meant to hit hard, and it does, because it invites the audience to compare what one politician receives from the state to what the same state says ordinary residents should not have.
Noir then ties that to Johnson’s support for Illinois firearm restrictions after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed a lower court’s preliminary injunction against the state’s ban on so-called assault-style weapons and related magazine limits.
According to Colion, Johnson praised that ruling and described the law as an important step to keep “weapons of war” out of neighborhoods.
That phrase becomes the centerpiece of the whole segment.
Noir Says the “Weapons of War” Line Falls Apart Under Scrutiny
For Colion Noir, the phrase “weapons of war” is not just misleading. It is the kind of political language meant to sound frightening while skipping over the technical reality.
To push back on it, he brings in Justice Clarence Thomas.
Noir says Thomas, whom he describes as one of the Supreme Court’s strongest defenders of Second Amendment rights, directly addressed the AR-15 framing when the Court was looking at the Illinois case. Colion quotes Thomas as saying, “The AR-15 is a civilian, not military weapon. No army in the world uses a service rifle that is only semi-automatic.”
That quote matters because it lets Noir challenge the emotional labeling with a legal and factual counterpoint.
His argument is simple: Brandon Johnson calls the AR-15 a weapon of war while being protected by officers likely carrying firearms with capabilities beyond that civilian rifle. So in Noir’s view, the public is being told to fear a gun that the political class clearly understands as useful when protection matters.
That is the core contrast he wants viewers to sit with.
The mayor’s message, Colion says, is effectively this: government officials and their armed details can enjoy powerful means of personal protection, but ordinary residents are expected to accept tighter limits on the tools they might lawfully use for themselves.
That is a powerful critique, and it works because the image is so easy to grasp. One side gets armed protection in layers. The other gets lectures about why it should not want comparable peace of mind.
“Guns for Me, Restrictions for You”
Noir makes clear that he does not see Johnson as an isolated example.
He says this is part of a larger political pattern, one he describes as “guns for me, not for thee.” To support that point, he brings up Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, both of whom he says publicly supported restrictions on the same categories of firearms carried by the agents and officers protecting them.
Colion points to Clinton’s 2022 comment that “no one actually needs an AR-15,” then contrasts that with the fact that she spent years surrounded by taxpayer-funded armed protection. He also recalls her earlier statement after the San Bernardino terror attack that guns, in her opinion, would not make Americans safer.
For Noir, that statement lands very differently when it comes from someone standing behind a wall of armed government protection.
He makes a similar point about Biden, arguing that the former president pushed for bans on firearms even as he benefited from constant protection by people carrying those same kinds of guns.
That is where Colion draws one of his clearest distinctions in the whole video.
In his view, these officials are not truly anti-gun. They are anti-you having a gun. He says that difference is massive, and he wants the audience to recognize it plainly rather than getting lost in the abstract language of policy debates.
Chicago’s Laws and Chicago’s Violence
Noir also uses Chicago itself to make a broader argument against restrictive gun laws.
He notes that Chicago and Illinois already have some of the most aggressive firearm restrictions in the country, including the state’s ban on so-called assault-style weapons. Yet he points out that Chicago is still widely seen as one of the most violent cities in the United States.
His conclusion is not subtle.
If those laws are working so well, Colion asks, why does the mayor still need 150 armed officers protecting him? The implication is that even the people making and praising these laws do not trust the laws alone to keep them safe.
That is one of the sharper parts of his argument because it turns the official claim back on itself.
Noir is essentially saying that the people who insist gun restrictions create safety continue to rely, in practice, on armed force when their own safety is on the line. In that sense, he argues, they are demonstrating what they truly trust even while telling the public something else.
Whether one agrees with his broader politics or not, that criticism is not hard to understand. It is difficult to sell a message of disarmament from behind a large taxpayer-funded armed shield.
The Castle Rock Point and the Bigger Second Amendment Argument
Toward the middle of the video, Colion brings in a point that gun-rights advocates often use but that many casual viewers may not know much about: the government’s legal duty to protect individuals.
He cites Castle Rock v. Gonzales, saying the Supreme Court ruled that the government has no legal obligation to protect you. In Noir’s framing, that means ordinary Americans are being told to accept tighter limits on self-defense tools even though the state is not actually required to save them in an emergency.
That is why he sees the Second Amendment as more than a policy preference.
For Colion, it is the legal and moral answer to the gap between public vulnerability and private political protection. If police are not guaranteed to arrive in time, and if the law says they are not specifically obligated to protect each individual, then he argues that law-abiding citizens must retain meaningful access to the tools needed to defend themselves.
That is the larger philosophy beneath the whole segment.
He says the militia is not Brandon Johnson’s security detail and not some distant government force. In his telling, it is ordinary law-abiding citizens who refuse to accept that their safety belongs entirely in someone else’s hands.
That is a familiar argument from Noir, but in this case he says Brandon Johnson’s security setup makes the point more clearly than any slogan could.
Colion’s Bottom Line: Ask What Their Security Detail Thinks
By the end of the video, Noir boils the issue down to one question.
Every time a politician says you do not need a certain gun, or that your magazine is too big, or that your rifle is a “weapon of war,” Colion says you should ask whether that politician’s security detail agrees.
In Brandon Johnson’s case, he clearly believes the answer is no.
In Hillary Clinton’s case, he says the same thing. For Joe Biden, too. The common thread, in his telling, is that officials talk one way to the public while living another reality themselves.
That is why this story has bite.
It is not just about one mayor’s budget or one state’s law. It is about a broader public message that says armed protection is necessary, but mostly for the people already in power. Colion Noir’s argument is that the Second Amendment exists to reject that divide, not to preserve it.
You do not have to agree with every flourish in his presentation to understand why the contrast he highlights is resonating. A mayor praises limits on rifles owned by ordinary people, calls them “weapons of war,” and then lives behind a wall of armed officers paid for by the same public being told to make do with less.
That is the kind of image that tends to stick.
Ed spent his childhood in the backwoods of Maine, where harsh winters taught him the value of survival skills. With a background in bushcraft and off-grid living, Ed has honed his expertise in fire-making, hunting, and wild foraging. He writes from personal experience, sharing practical tips and hands-on techniques to thrive in any outdoor environment. Whether it’s primitive camping or full-scale survival, Ed’s advice is grounded in real-life challenges.
