Yesterday Gun-nut Nation finally saw its most fervent hopes and dreams realized when a small group of African-American gun guys showed up at the State Capitol in East Lansing, MI toting their AR-15’s to ‘protect’ a legislator who spoke out against the previous week’s demonstration by White gun nuts to protest the lockdown and social distancing rules imposed in their state.

What could be more perfect to advance the agenda of the alt-right than a bunch of Black guys walking around with guns? The last time this happened was back in 1967, when the Black Panthers showed up at the State House in California protesting the repeal of the state’s open-carry law, which was signed by then-Governor Ronnie Reagan, remember him?

The NRA took a very low-keyed position to the appearance of the Panthers, just as the ‘responsible’ alt-right led by big-mouth Sean Hannity cautioned the gun nuts who brought their guns into the State Senate chamber to ‘leave your guns at home.’ But let’s not sell America’s super-patriots short. Gun-nut Nation has been hoping and preying for years that they could finally promote themselves as America’s first line of defense against anyone and everyone who might threaten us in our homes or on our streets. What greater threat could there be than a bunch of Black guys coming around with their AR’s?

If anyone reading this column actually believes that the pro-gun, alt-right movement doesn’t have a significant racial (i.e., racist) component behind its appeal, you haven’t been following the news. Remember a guy named Cliven ‘let me tell you about your Negro’ Bundy? Remember how all those White schmucks who had nothing better to do showed up at his ranch to make a ‘hard stand’ against the federal government’s attempt to make him pay grazing fees for using public lands? Remember how that fearless journalist Sean Hannity backed off from lionizing Bundy as soon as the idiot-rancher shot off his mouth?

So here we go again. If you’re a White man walking around with an AR, you’re protecting the infringement of Constitutional ‘rights’ by you-know-who, the you-know-who’s being tree-huggers, liberals, members of the Democrat Party, baby-killers, vaccinators and worst of all, anyone and everyone who doesn’t support Donald Trump. If, on the other hand,  you’re a Black dude who shows up with your AR which you’re going to stick in the face of those God-fearing, freedom-loving White guys, what does the alt-right have to say about them?

The bottom line is that the whole issue of gun ownership has never really been about gun ‘rights.’ The NRA can talk on and on about how it’s the ‘oldest civil rights’ organization in the United States, but that’s nothing but pure, unadulterated crap. When most people use the term ‘civil rights’ they’re talking about racial equality, gender equality, sexual equality, they’re not talking about walking around with a gun.

The term ‘2^nd-Amendment rights’ has always been a code-word for promoting a political stance that really has little, if anything, to do with guns. It has to do with a cultural war which heats up when the GOP makes a turn to the more conservative side of its constituency, and then cools down when the same group of politicians and media noisemakers decide that they have to move the needle back towards the center-right. If a more moderate Republican were sitting in the Oval Office right now, nobody would be paying attention to these alt-right putzes at all.

By the same token, I don’t notice my friends in Gun-control Nation getting all hot and bothered when a Black firefighter and a few of his friends show up at the State Capitol in Michigan toting their guns. How come I haven’t received a ‘desperate’ appeal from Brady or Giffords telling me that if we don’t ban assault rifles, the world will come to an end?

And by the way, I always refer to my assault rifles as  ‘black guns’ because that’s how they’re finished and that’s how they’re made. Oh well, I guess I’m just not in tune with how things change.