An Ohio man has been charged with brandishing a gun at an Ohio Wikipedia conference.

An Ohio man is facing criminal charges after he allegedly stormed a stage at a Wikipedia conference in New York City with a gun – as well as a sign declaring himself a “non-offending pedophile” – and threatened to kill himself.

Connor Weston, 27, was reportedly tackled by organizers of WikiConference North America 2025, thwarting tragedy, before police said officers booked him on counts of criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment.

The Dayton resident had evidently paid to attend the four-day conference when he disrupted its opening ceremony at 9am Friday in Manhattan’s Civic Hall. He jumped on to a stage at the venue, pointed a gun at his head and the ceiling, and expressed a desire to take his life while a sign draped around his neck declared him to be an “anti-contact non-offending pedophile”, police and multiple media reports said.
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Friday was apparently not the first time Weston had publicly labeled himself an “anti contact, non offending pedophile”. A social media video circulated in July shows a man providing Weston’s name, age and home town; applying that term to himself; and saying he can “choose not to harm minors … but can’t choose to stop being attracted to them”.

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As NBC News noted, Johns Hopkins University defines non-offending pedophiles as “a unique population of individuals who experience sexual interest in children, but despite common misperceptions, have neither had sexual contact with a child nor have accessed illegal child sexual exploitation material”.

Wikipedia has a rule indefinitely blocking and banning from the platform any editors “who identify themselves as pedophiles”

Pedophiles are arguably the most reviled people in society. I have read that in prisons, they are the most likely to suffer violence at the hands of other inmates, even more so than any other class including mass murderers. But if we take the self-description given by Weston of being an “anti-contact non-offending pedophile” at face value, it means that these people are only thinking about it, and not actually doing anything. It would be a thought crime.

People have all manner of fantasies that would be condemned if they said them out loud. Almost any day sees stories about people saying things on the internet that gets them into trouble. Usually that is because those people are stupid or careless or arrogant and think that they will not suffer any repercussions. The question is why people like Weston would want to publicly out themselves as pedophiles, however carefully circumscribed to be not prosecutable, since it would immediately bring about a great deal of opprobrium on them. What benefit do they gain?

The only reason that I can think of is that they are trying to gain acceptance in society as just another special interest group so that they can openly form affinity groups on social media with like-minded people.