How a Buncombe sheriff candidate's gun rights video went viral, and then turned into a weapon

Hours after a conservative website posted a 30-second clip of Daryl Fisher making a joke about gun control, hundreds of comments from all corners of the internet came pouring in, turning a local candidate for sheriff into a viral sensation.

The video, since first being posted on a Facebook page, has been shared and viewed on Twitter hundreds of thousands of times, making Fisher known well beyond the borders of Western North Carolina.

One tweet alone garnered the video more than 300,000 views, and it has since been shared by numerous right-wing news sources, raising fears of government gun seizures.

More: Buncombe County sheriff's candidate Daryl Fisher's 'cold, dead hands' gun joke goes viral

The original five-minute video was posted by Fisher's campaign team on March 14 on his YouTube channel. The clip was condensed to 30 seconds in which Fisher responds to a question by saying, "people say you'll have to pry my guns out of my cold, dead hands...OK." He then shrugs and the crowd responds with laughter.

With that shrug and laughs from his audience over use of a defiant refrain popular with opponents of additional gun restrictions, Fisher a Democratic candidate running for sheriff in Buncombe County, found himself caught up in a debate over firearms restrictions that has been waged fiercely through social media.

Thousands have demanded he step out of the race. Others have gone so far as posting his home address.

On a national scale, Fisher's situation is mild compared to other viral videos of politicians that have ruined reputations and destroyed careers — like Howard Dean's now infamous yell, which quickly plummeted him to the bottom of the polls in a race he was favored to win.

The timing has certainly played a factor. Fisher's comment spread when students, in wake of a mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people, have led a national movement calling for gun control legislation.

It also came at a time when John Paul Stevens, a retired associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, published an Op-Ed in the New York Times suggesting the Second Amendment be repealed.

Though Fisher has said he is surprised at the reach of the video and the anger it created, he shouldn't have been caught off guard, according to a professor who studies such cases.

In any race, even one as small as a local sheriff's election, those comments easily have the potential for scrutiny on a national level, said Robert Hernandez, a professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

"If you're running for office and you make a joke that was not thought through, then you are putting it out there and you should be prepared for a reaction in this climate," Hernandez said. "It will go viral and spread quickly, from something local to something national."

The Citizen Times traced the original post to a Facebook page called WNC Second Amendment Supporters, which launched in 2013 and has more than 7,000 followers.

More: Under fire: Threats against Buncombe sheriff candidate 'too numerous to count'

The clip was posted to their page on March 23 and said, "ATTENTION BUNCOMBE RESIDENTS: Pay attention and listen closely. We have a veteran officer and candidate for Buncombe County Sheriff making atrocious comments in regards to the 2A. Mr. Fisher removed this video from his campaign FB page, what is he trying to hide?"

The video has been viewed on their page more than 53,000 times.

But the comment began to gain steam online after the popular conservative site, The Red Elephants, shared it on its Facebook Page on March 24. Its page has a following of about 300,000 people.

People who manage The Red Elephants page said they were doing advanced searches on Facebook to see what people were talking about when they stumbled onto WNC Second Amendment Supporters and saw the video of Fisher.

Four days later, at least 114 public pages on Facebook had also published posts about Fisher's joke. Among that lot included Fox News, The Gateway Pundit and Infowars.

The posts collectively garnered more than 40,000 shares, according to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool that tracks how stories spread online.

The sentiment towards Fisher’s comment was largely the same: Democrats are coming to kill you and take your guns, which Fisher has fiercely rebutted.

The posts ranged from aggressive to ominous, further inciting angry responses from people online.

“It begins,” many politically conservative and pro Second Amendment groups and pages said, implying that this type of rhetoric will only proliferate.

“Mr. Fisher deleted this video from his Facebook page, what is he trying to hide?” The Red Elephants asked. “Didn't he swear to uphold the Constitution?”

“Yes, they’re coming for your guns,” the RedState wrote on Facebook.

“Daryl Fisher also says he will kill citizens of his county if they don’t turn over their guns,” The Gateway Pundit wrote.

"Calling on North Carolina Sheriff Candidate Daryl Fisher to resign IMMEDIATELY for stating, 'Kill Gun Owners Who Won't Give Them Up ...'" Lori Hendry, a conservative voice with a formidable Twitter following, tweeted.

Fisher told the Citizen Times Friday that the “onslaught of negative comments” that started when he went viral has fairly well subsided since late last month. The number of notifications he has received from detractors has dropped from one every few seconds to one or two per day.

He said he’s getting three or four messages a day from supporters who said they saw the video and stand behind him and his call for “common sense” gun legislation. That includes banning the sale of high-capacity magazines and setting a minimum age of 21 for the purchasing of firearms.

Fisher said he wasn’t surprised that he went viral. But he said it was still shocking to watch the message of his campaign hijacked by people he’d never met.

"I always knew social media had a high-impact potential, but whenever it's directed at you, it does make you stop and think for a minute," he said.

Hernandez, USC professor, has watched for years as online trolls from both the right and left have used moments such as Fisher's to influence their followers. He said it's called "truthiness," meaning a statement is kind of true but there are bits of vital information missing for context purposes.

"But you still can't say he didn't say those things, because technically he did," Hernandez said. "This is an era of politics more so than ever before where everyone has a cell phone video and everyone is being recorded and watched, meaning you have to carry yourself in a completely different way than you would have even a decade ago."

Hernandez said viral clips like Fisher's hold a lot of sway, but it still may not be enough to ruin his chances of winning. With every passing election, local or national, he said determining outcomes gets less and less predictable

Asheville Tea Party President Jane Bilello, who sees herself as a defender of the Second Amendment, said she was “absolutely appalled” by Fisher’s comments and thinks that they should disqualify him from the race.

Bilello lives in Henderson County and will not be able to cast a ballot against Fisher. But she said that the Asheville Tea Party — which despite its name is more a regional party — is calling for its members and anybody else who is listening to vote against Fisher.

Fisher said he will not remove himself from the race. But the threats and insults have left him and his family rattled, he said.

Like Fisher, Bilello said she wasn’t surprised the video went viral. She said she was happy it did but not just because it drew attention to Fisher’s comments.

The video and the reaction to it “shine a light on how we can no longer have a civil conversation,” she said.

“What (Fisher) said was horrible, but the people who made threats and remarks about his daughter who passed away were just as wrong,” she said. “That’s totally unacceptable. I don’t agree with the guy on anything, but I’d go out and defend him on that.”

Bilello and Fisher might not agree on a lot, but they do agree that an open conversation is sorely needed if school violence is to be curbed.

Fisher said he’s not changing his campaign platforms or views on gun laws after taking his cyber lashing. But he does want to be able to sit down and talk with the people outraged by his comments.

“Our communities are fed up with the violence, and to change that, it’s going to take everybody sitting down and formulating a plan of action for the future,” he said. “And it’s been my experience that face-to-face communication works much better.”

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Citizen Times reporter Sam DeGrave contributed to this article.