The Lone Gunmen John Fitzgerald Byers, Ringo Langly, and Melvin Frohike are three of Mulder's sources who work at monthly magazine "The Lone Gunman: The Newsletter For Those Who Want to Stay Informed and Alive", a paranoid publication dealing with perceived government conspiracies, so called in reference to one of the many Kennedy assassination theories. The magazine's apparently been going for ten years, since their November 1998 issue is Vol. X No. 11. It's published monthly at a dollar an issue, ten dollars a year or the bargain rate of twenty five dollars for three years [Dreamland II]. They have produced a black jacket with the Lone Gunman logo on it, in red, on the breast pocket. In "Kill Switch", Esther "borrows" it when she escapes from their office. They got their name from Mr X in May 1989 [Unusual Suspects], when he said, referring both to the Kennedy assassination and to the cover-up they'd just witnessed, "I heard it was a lone gunman". This appears to be a fairly wide ranging publication, covering anything we're likely to find in the "X-Files". In "E.B.E.", Mulder calls them an "extreme government watchdog group". Some of their ideas are first rate, he tells her, but some are "downright spooky". After meeting them, Scully pronounces them the most paranoid people she's ever met, and says not one word they say is remotely plausible. The Lone Gunmen are useful for providing Mulder with background information on any subject that he may need background information on, and are invaluable to writers as they can always be relied upon to know something that can advance a plot when it reaches in impasse.
Their office is rather like Mulder's office, the Lone Gunmen's office is packed with books, files, computers etc. The outside of the building is seen in "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" and the staircase (bare and metallic) up to their office is seen in "Paper Clip". Unlike Mulder, they appear to live high up rather than subterranean. From "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man" we see that the building is definitely in a run-down neighborhood. CSM has rats and broken windows in his building across the street (or alleyway). The address is in black above the door: 566. No street name given. Building itself is wood-planked. At the right of the building we see what is either a column or a new building made of cinderblock. To the right of the door are two metal, round garbage cans - the kind that homeless people build fires in. They are full of garbage. The door is wood and has no doorknob, per se, just a knob on the right that does not turn or lock. Presumably the door locks from the inside. There is a professionally done sign on the door all in caps, reading:
THE LONE GUNMEN
PUBLISHER OF
"THE MAGIC BULLET"
NEWSLETTER
In "One Breath" their screen saver features Nixon, saying "I am not a crook". They seem to livein their little office, too. In "Kill Switch", we see Scully taking a nap in what appears to be their sleeping room, but it is proved in "The End", when Scully visits them at night. Byers wears traditional pajamas, Langly seems to wear sweats, but Frohike appears to wear a bullet-proof vest to bed - or else to have hastily put it on before opening the door. They have an old battered pale blue Volkswagen van [Triangle]. [Season 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Movie]
Born on 11/22/1963 and named after JFK (before that, he was supposed to be named Bertram [Unusual Suspects]), the military and information systems expert of the Lone Gunman cabal, Byers looks like a professor who has wandered into a CIA rendezvous by mistake. His neat beard and dapper suits and ties seem out of place among his grungier colleagues, but his sharp mind and no-nonsense demeanor attest to an encyclopedic knowledge of conspiracy theory and current speculation on everything from the Kennedy assassination to the latest in DNA research. In "One Breath", Byers unerringly recognizes and describes the bizarre recombinant chemistry that lies at the heart of Dana Scully's disease, and quietly expresses sympathy to Mulder. In "Memento Mori", he goes into action with Mulder, revealing there is more to him than meets the eye. He is also revealed as something of an expert skater [Apocrypha] unlike his colleagues. Byers wears a wedding ring (in every scene he is seen in, plus publicity shots.) It is not known if he is married, divorced or widowed, though. He occasionally indulges in a wit as sardonic as Mulder's, as when he tells him: "That's why we like you, Mulder: your ideas are weirder than ours". Unlike co-conspirators Langly and Frohike, he is the least liable to crack a joke or even a smile, but his calm intelligence lends authority and believability to the unlikely trio's offices.
One wonders just how much of life this man takes seriously. Sporting black-rimmed glasses, long blond hair and T-shirts from a dozen hard-rock bands such as the Ramones, he is not the picture of a conventional conspirator. Langly is the communications expert of the Lone Gunman editorial collective, the one most likely to joke with Mulder or invite him to "hop on the Internet to nitpick the scientific inaccuracies" of a new science-fiction show. But he's also a little bent; in "Fearful Symmetry", his colleague Byers explains Langly's absence in a meeting as a philosophical aversion to having his image bounced off a satellite. He automatically records every incoming phone call, and is evidently as conversant with current conspiracy theory as his two compadres. But he is ready with a laugh any time Mulder's theories get a little "out there", such as the idea that UFOs started the Gulf War. Nevertheless, when Mulder insists that Langly turn off the recording device [E.B.E.], Langly does not hesitate to lie to him. Among the Lone Gunmen, truth is as rare as trust. He was (and probably stil is) and avid player of Dungeons and Dragons. Langly can't pronounce Spanish, but Byers and Frohike can [Dreamland II].
The photographic and surveillance specialist in the group. Short, unshaven and clad in combat boots, Frohike is the Frog Prince of the Lone Gunman editorial board. Next to Langly and Byers, he looks like the proverbial dirty old man. From his first leering appearance [E.B.E.], he has made no secret of his attraction to Agent Dana Scully [E.B.E., Little Green Men, One Breath, Fearful Symmetry, The Blessing Way], pronouncing her "hot" when he first sees her, a sentiment he repeats with even more conviction after hearing her expound about the CIA. This leads Mulder to say "Settle down, Frohike." He asks with interest about her when she and Mulder are split up, calling her "tasty", he once loaned Mulder a pair of night-vision goggles only after extracting Scully's phone number from him [Blood]. Yet he has shown a tender side as well, being the only person to bring Scully flowers when she lay dying [One Breath] and at Scully's house when Mulder is presumed dead [The Blessing Way]. This shows his interest in her is more than mere lust, as he takes the trouble to dress up in a suit and tie, and enquires after her with respect and concern. In "Fearful Symmetry" he's back on form, asking Mulder to tell the "lovely Agent Scully" that he's been working out: "I'm buff," he says. In "The Blessing Way" he's once again rendered serious and supportive by tragedy, turning up at Scully's apartment to commiserate on Mulder's supposed death. He is also fairly close to Mulder. When he thinks Mulder's dead, he calls him a "true friend. A redwood among mere sprouts." He embraces Mulder when he finds out he's still alive. He seemed to have a role in Mulder and Scully's assignment to a manhunt for escaped convicts [F. Emasculata]. He does have something of a partiality to drink, as witnessed by his nocturnal visit to Scully's apartment in "The Blessing Way". As soon as she sees him she asks him how much he's drunk, and he shows her an empty bottle. Not a great talker, Frohike grows loquacious only when Mulder teases him; he succinctly summarized the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia in Mulder's apartment during "Anasazi" with one bon mot: "weirdness".

Fourth Lone Gunman, The Thinker, also known as Kenneth Soona, joined them shortly after "One Breath" and was killed about six months later. He was too secretive to actually appear in the office with them, but can be consulted via e-mail. He is the computer hacker who breaks into the Department of Defense's computers to and put Mulder and Scully in grave danger by obtaining a copy of a classified government document (MJ files) which retrieves evidence of government knowledge of extraterrestrial intelligence [Anasazi], and despite giving the tape to Mulder, turned up dead because of his actions [Paper Clip]. [Season 2, 3] (Note: most people don't think he was a Lone Gunman, but I do.)