According to various estimates, there are several hundred thousand sovereign citizen adherents in the United States, a type of anti-government extremists. These individuals believe that the U.S. federal government is illegitimate and that they are “freemen,” outside the control of government. Sovereign citizens eschew all affiliations and interactions with the federal government, while giving primacy to the power of the county law enforcement official, the sheriff. Furthermore, this mindset is comprised of pseudo-legal jargon as well as sometimes coupled with various conspiracy theories of militia groups: from a world-government trend to a foreign cabal controlling the U.S. and from the existence of UN troops and FEMA concentration camps on U.S. soil.
Indeed, there has been some overlap between those who espouse sovereign citizen and radical militia ideologies; the latter being stringent Second Amendment supporters with an, often, strong strain of anti-government precepts, tied with the fear that government authorities will confiscate guns and weapons of U.S. citizenry. Some individuals embrace traditional sovereign citizen, extremist militia and other radical tenets.