One afternoon in early January, just outside the small, north Texas town of Pottsboro, Vincent Smith shot and killed his friend, Charles Carter, who was drunk. The two were members of the American patriot movement, and they had been organizing, through Facebook, a march of gun rights evangelists on Washington. According to those who knew him, just before he was killed, Carter was expressing an interest in acquiring the makings of a bomb. The march imploded, just feet from where it began, before it ever got on the road.

On Monday evening, two members of the American militia movement, Charles Carter and Vincent Smith, got into an argument at Smith’s house, in the small Texas town of Pottsboro, just across the border from Oklahoma. The argument turned violent: Smith shot Carter in the head, killing him.