Waffle House suspect Travis Reinking deemed himself a 'sovereign citizen,' part of anti-government

The movement is rooted in racism and anti-Semitism, though most sovereigns, many of whom are African American, are unaware of their beliefs' origins. In the early 1980s, the sovereign citizens movement mostly attracted white supremacists and anti-Semites, mainly because sovereign theories originated in groups that saw Jews as working behind the scenes to manipulate financial institutions and control the government. Most early sovereigns, and some of those who are still on the scene believed that being white was a prerequisite to becoming a sovereign citizen. They argued that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed citizenship to African Americans and everyone else born on U.S. soil, also made black Americans permanently subject to federal and state governments, unlike themselves.

Later that day, the Tremont Police Department responded to a call at a public pool, according to another incident report. The pool director told the responding officer that a man in his 20s barged into the pool wearing a pink women's housecoat, the report states. The man dove into the pool, took off the coat and swam around in his underwear. When he got out of the pool, he shouted at lifeguards that he was a man and exposed his genitals to them, the report states.

The rifle stayed in the vehicle and no one at the pool asked to press charges, the officer said in the report. "This is an informational report showing the state of mind of Travis Reinking," the report said. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/23/us/travis-reinking-guns-trnd/index.html

The sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of American, Canadian and Australian litigants, commentators, tax protesters, and financial-scheme promoters. Self-described "sovereign citizens" see themselves as answerable only to their particular interpretation of the common law and as not subject to any government statutes or proceedings.[1] In the United States they do not recognize United States currency and maintain that they are "free of any legal constraints".[2][3][4] They especially reject most forms of taxation as illegitimate.[5] Participants in the movement argue this concept in opposition to the idea of "federal citizens", who, they say, have unknowingly forfeited their rights by accepting some aspect of federal law.[6] The doctrines of the movement resemble those of the freemen on the land movement more commonly found in the Commonwealth, such as in Britain and in Canada.[7][8][9][10]

Many members of the sovereign citizen movement believe that the United States government is illegitimate.[11] JJ MacNab, who writes for Forbes about anti-government extremism, has described the sovereign-citizen movement as consisting of individuals who believe that the county sheriff is the most powerful law-enforcement officer in the country, with authority superior to that of any federal agent, elected official, or local law-enforcement official.[12] This belief comes from the movement's origins in the white-extremist group Posse Comitatus.[13][citation needed]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) classifies some sovereign citizens ("sovereign citizen extremists" as domestic terrorists.[14] In 2010 the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimated that approximately 100,000 Americans were "hard-core sovereign believers", with another 200,000 "just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges".[15]

In surveys conducted in 2014 and 2015, representatives of US law-enforcement ranked the risk of terrorism from the sovereign-citizen movement higher than the risk from Islamic extremism.[16][17] The New South Wales Police Force in Australia has also identified sovereign citizens as a potential terrorist threat.[18]