By Canberk Yuksel and Mohammed Elshamy

NEW YORK

Unlike thousands of Americans protesting in the streets for days on end, members of an armed militia group in Georgia appear happy and relieved as they conduct routine weapons training in their semi-secluded camp in Atlanta.

Leader Chris Hill believes the Georgia Security Force III% (GSF) has a champion in President-elect Donald Trump. The assumption of the former Marine is not without merit.

The Republican business mogul, who was endorsed by the influential National Rifle Association, has promised to remove a ban on gun-free zones in schools and military bases on his first day in office.

According to his website, he also plans to lift limitations on gun and ammunition purchases, appoint pro-gun ownership Supreme Court judges and institute an unprecedented national right to carry arms.

“We are going to protect our Second Amendment," Trump said in a campaign video.

But guns are not the only thing that draws the militia to Trump; they share another commonality. A hardline stance on immigration and “radical Islam” are among the group’s core tenets.

It was this concern for safety that led an Anadolu Agency photojournalist Mohammed Elshamy to introduce himself as Billy to the GSF camp.

“They scare the crap out of me,” Hill, who goes by the code name Blood Agent, said of extremist international groups that use Islamic insignia. Trump, who campaigned on a platform of a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, is his man for the top job.

The GSF camp, covered with Trump banners, hats and other memorabilia, stays partially hidden under the dappled sunlight of the forest. The 11 men up for training the day Anadolu Agency visited the site are all wearing military fatigues, covering a t-shirt in Hill's case that says "when tyranny becomes law, resistance becomes duty".

Before the drills begin, Hill breaks out a black acoustic guitar with metal strings to give the group a 15-minute concert, playing country music wearing a camo hat and jacket, with a cigarette in his mouth.

Before long, members who came for the FTX – Field Training Exercise – pick up semi-automatic and scope-equipped rifles and take positions in front of targets.

Some train at close range with green upper body shaped gun targets, while others lie down on white floorboards with "GSF III%" sprayed on them to put in long-range practice.

A little out from the parked black heavy duty trucks and large solid-color tents scattered around the camp site is a white trailer, used as a depot for training equipment and protection from the elements.

Not far away are playground swings for the handful of 8- to 10-year-olds frolicking around. But they are not here to just stand by and get out of the way as the adults get going with the training. Soon enough, Ashton, 11, approaches his father, Hill, and picks up a pistol to start working on his short-range accuracy. ***

The GSF is one of hundreds of extremist militia groups across the United States, that feels emboldened by the Republican campaign for the White House. They thrive on the attacks he unleashed on immigrants and Muslims, but the main factor that motivates them is guns, along with their nagging suspicions that his rival, Hillary Clinton, was against gun ownership, despite her insisting otherwise.

The militia self-identifies with a broader, nationwide phenomenon called the 3 percent group, named after a disputed premise that only 3 percent of Americans took up arms during the American Revolution to win independence from the British.

Hill and his people, dressed in combat fatigues, spend their weekends undergoing improvised military training in the woods to fight off a range of perceived threats -- threats that will probably never materialize, such as an Islamic takeover, a Russian invasion or total collapse of the economic system.

Now with a Trump administration set to take power, and with both houses of Congress seized by Republicans, real change can happen in gun control, for better or worse.

The U.S. has a problem with guns. In a country of approximately 325 million people, there are enough guns to arm every single man, woman and child.

Nearly 13,000 people were killed in gun violence this year, according to Gun Violence Archive. From post Sept. 11, 2001, to 2011, the average number of victims who lost their lives to gun violence was 11,101, while the average number of U.S. citizens killed by terrorism was 17, according to Justice Department figures.

After Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded dozens more in Florida in June, a local journalist in Philadelphia wondered how easy it would be to get the same gun Mateen used to commit one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history.

From the moment Helen Ubinas gave her driver’s license to the salesperson to her passing a background check, it was seven minutes total to purchase an AR-15, a semi-automatic assault rifle once used by the U.S. military.

Outgoing president Barack Obama was left frustrated by a gridlocked Congress when it came to introducing changes to existing gun legislation, some of which were even backed by the Republican-leaning NRA, such as plugging holes in the background check system.

Obama, while introducing gun control measures in January in an executive-order capacity, was overwhelmed with tears as he recalled the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012 that killed 28 people, including 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7.

But among all the dooms day scenarios the GSF holds on to for motivation to keep training, it’s the fear of radical Islam and refugees that takes the spotlight. That fear led Hill’s group to protest last month at the site of a proposed mosque in the small suburb of Covington.

The longstanding mosque in nearby Doraville had reached full capacity and was seeking to expand on the site -- until locals at a planning meeting voiced concerns of rape, radicalization and losing American values.

The Georgia Security Force protested outside, fully armed, and the decision was postponed by the council for safety reasons.

Rewind to present day, and you can notice a pattern. A week after the end of a bitter election cycle, and violence and hate have been on the rise.

The non-profit rights group Southern Poverty Law Center said the frequency and intensity of hate attacks since the Nov. 8 election are even worse than those committed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack.

The attacks target minority groups, including blacks, Latinos and Muslims.

In his first television interview as president-elect, Trump said he was “so saddened to hear” about the attacks. “And I say, ‘Stop it’, if it helps.”

Nihad Awad, the president of the largest Muslim advocacy group in the U.S., was nevertheless concerned when he talked to Anadolu Agency about his reaction to the election result and the ensuing environment of protests and attacks.

“No one can uproot us from our country and we have to remain positive and hopeful," said Awad, who heads the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). "We should not allow fear to paralyze us."

Awad had a message for Trump: Be presidential and assure American Muslims and all other minority groups that you would not "discriminate or target any community or any minority based on ethnic background, religion or country of origin.

"This is what the Constitution and the law of the country say. Equal protection and equal treatment.”

With two months to go before he takes office Jan. 20., it is anyone’s guess how much of the divisive rhetoric of a hard-fought campaign would make its way into the Oval Office, but Trump is ready to pledge working toward unity.

“This will prove to be a great time in the lives of ALL Americans,” he tweeted over the weekend. “We will unite and we will win, win, win!”