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... as far as I know, mercury isn't a restricted product and can be shipped to your door.

Here's a video of a guy flushing 240# of mercury down a toilet (NOT connected to a sewer or septic system), just to see if it was possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvVaaZ21C44

It's not exactly difficult to find industrial users of mercury, and the mercury at Sunspot is in a sealed instrument. I see no reason why the presence of mercury there would be incentive for an "armed group" to attempt to assault and/or hold the observatory.

Why is he not wearing gloves?!

I'm no expert here, but is metallic mercury that much of a hazard? I thought it was the vapor that was the big risk with handling mercury.

Obviously, I'd be sure of that before I handled it :)

Believe so.

See: mad hatters

OK, I'll bite: why would extremists want a whole bunch of mercury?

It's a useful ingredient in some explosives.

Do observatories usually have hundreds of pounds of mercury?

Some observatories (including this one it seems) use liquid mercury as mirrors:

https://sunspot.solar/about/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_mirror_telescope

For reference, 350 lbs is about 3 gallons of liquid mercury. Mercury is heavy.