Agree or disagree with them on policy, teenage survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida have emerged as compelling spokespeople for the cause of gun control, leveraging their inherently sympathetic situation, media savvy, and conviction to become high-profile and effective advocates.

The reason these young people were spurred to action seems pretty obvious. Watching their friends be gunned down en masse increased the salience of the issue. And Parkland, Florida, where the shooting took place, is exactly the kind of reasonably diverse and upscale suburban district where Donald Trump’s brand of culture-war politics has alienated most people and inspired tons of new grassroots organizing.

Or else, as right-wing celebrity former Sheriff David Clarke alleged, maybe it’s a conspiracy organized by George Soros.

The well ORGANIZED effort by Florida school students demanding gun control has GEORGE SOROS’ FINGERPRINTS all over it. It is similar to how he hijacked and exploited black people’s emotion regarding police use of force incidents into the COP HATING Black Lives Matter movement. pic.twitter.com/XDZ3bcwF6F — David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) February 20, 2018

Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, “liked” on Twitter the related conspiracy theory pushed by TruePundit and GatewayPundit that the entire student movement is part of some larger anti-Trump plot at the FBI.

VIDEO: Outspoken Trump-Hating School Shooting Survivor is Son of FBI Agent; MSM Helps Prop Up Incompetent Bureau https://t.co/AYCNLlXJqx — Thomas Paine (@Thomas1774Paine) February 20, 2018

Trump Jr., as well as being at the center of the personal corruption that forms the heart of Trump-era governance, has long been his father’s bridge to the sleaziest portions of the right-wing internet. And the prominence of these conspiracy theories in contemporary American politics largely reflects the unique pathologies of the Trump White House. The president of the United States is a well-known conspiracy theorist, which raises the prospect that ridiculous ideas lurking in the darkest recesses of the internet could actually influence national policy.

But beyond that, the appeal of these specific conspiracies reflects something real. Spectacular mass shootings are not at the center of America’s gun problem. But they are very much at the center of progressives’ political strategy for increasing gun regulation. Politics ain’t beanbag, and gun control advocates are under no obligation to disavow an effective tactic. But gun rights enthusiasts are not mistaken to see a somewhat manipulative strategy at work — even as their baroque conspiracy theories remain utterly false.

Crisis actors, explained

The “crisis actor” concept has been gaining steam in conspiracy circles for years and refers to the notion that a secretive cabal of individuals is paid to travel around the country with its members posing as survivors of various newsworthy massacres to advance a political agenda.

Crisis actors, to be clear, are a real thing, but they are not hired to serve as fake victims of real tragedies. Rather, they are hired to serve as fake victims of fake tragedies for the purposes of military or police training exercises.

But back in 2012, conspiracy theorist James Tracy put forth the theory that many victims of the Sandy Hook massacre being quoted in the media were, in fact, “crisis actors” hired to advance the gun control agenda. Tracy also advanced a crisis actor theory of the Boston Marathon bombing. But the mass shooting version of the theory naturally has more legs since it intersects with a longstanding partisan political debate.

Two factors appear to have really kicked victim-related conspiracies into overdrive in the wake of the Parkland shooting. One is simply that the large group of survivor-activists is more noteworthy than what we’ve seen from past events. But the other is the rising prominence of fairly outlandish theories of the FBI on the American right.

An FBI plot to do ... something?

What’s indisputably true is that one of the leading spokespeople for the student activists, David Hogg, is the son of a retired FBI agent.

A family connection to law enforcement is not the kind of thing that has traditionally been viewed as discrediting in American life — and certainly not as discrediting in conservative political circles — but things are changing in the Trump era.

Can’t remember the last time “son of an FBI agent” was deployed as a slur. https://t.co/SNnu5nZkYg — Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) February 20, 2018

In particular, the vicissitudes of the ongoing investigation into the Russian government’s 2016 information operation and possible ties to the Trump campaign have prompted the development of a number of baroque and inaccurate conspiracy theories that attempt to paint the FBI — a disproportionately white, disproportionately male law enforcement agency that has never in its entire history had a Democrat serve as director — as the epicenter of a “deep state” conspiracy to take down the Trump administration.

Trump himself leaned into one attack on the FBI by suggesting that the counterintelligence probe of Russia had somehow prevented the Miami field office from preempting the Parkland shooting.

Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign - there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2018

It’s unclear how this would work, since there’s no relevant fungibility of resources, and under the lax gun rules Trump favors, there’s nothing the FBI could have done to stop the killer from stockpiling guns and ammunition anyway.

But with conservatives tilting hard against the FBI, it’s not too far of a leap to suggest that Hogg is just a patsy for the FBI’s nefarious agenda.

The notion of a bureau-inspired plot is in some ways less ridiculous than the “crisis actors” theory — Hogg’s dad really was in the FBI, and for all we know, he really does hate Trump — but on another level, it’s even crazier. Hogg is clearly not the only survivor speaking out; he just happens to be the only one with a family connection to the FBI.

Alfonso Calderon, a Florida school shooting survivor: “Trust me, I understand. I was in a closet locked, for four hours...I understand what it’s like to text my parents, ‘goodbye, I might never ever get to see you again, I love you’” pic.twitter.com/UaooVSPNNA — BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) February 21, 2018

The truth, obviously, is that there is no conspiracy here. A tragic event galvanized a group of students who likely were predisposed to progressive politics to organize and take action on one particular topic. They’ve gotten a lot of play in the media because mass shootings have long been a major television news topic and because high school students getting involved in political activism is a noteworthy story.

Media buzz around mass shootings is essentially the leading edge of a progressive political strategy on guns whose main goals are only tangentially related to what’s happening on television.

Mass shootings are a small portion of gun violence

There is an indisputable link between America’s abnormally high number of guns per capita and its abnormally high number of gun deaths. But while mass shootings tend to become national media events, they make up a tiny fraction of those deaths.

Depending on which definition of mass shooting one uses, there are anywhere from a dozen to a few hundred mass shootings in the US each year. Under the broadest definition of mass shooting, these incidents killed about 500 Americans in 2013, relative to 11,200 gun homicides and nearly 21,200 gun suicides. In other words, even if you somehow completely eliminated mass shootings, America would still be an extreme outlier among developed countries in terms of both gun homicides and overall gun deaths.

What’s more, while Australia’s famous decision to respond to a spectacular mass shooting with strict new gun laws does appear to have legitimately saved many lives, the clearest statistical evidence is that it saved lives by reducing suicides.

And the poll-tested incremental gun control measures that politicians tend to push in the wake of mass shootings are far too mild to have an Australia-size impact.

Gun control proponents are, of course, well aware of this. Michael Bloomberg, the founder and primary funder of Everytown for Gun Safety has said quite openly that he is as much or more concerned about handguns as about assault rifles and that “having a gun at home when you have children is really dumb.”

Like other highly engaged gun control proponents, in other words, his focus isn’t really on reducing the lethality of mass shootings via modest gun regulations. It’s on trying to take a big bite out of America’s massive spate of gun murders, gun suicides, and accidental shootings through extremely robust gun regulation measures.

The mass shootings are simply spectacular events that focus attention on the issue. The modest measures suggested in their wake are designed to prove that the National Rifle Association can be beaten and build moment for further action.

That’s not a nefarious conspiracy — it’s basic, competent political organizing. But it is a real thing that is happening behind the scenes, somewhat obscured by laudatory coverage of the Parkland survivors and their activism.