"I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan"
-- Warren Zevon

Three groups with different agendas but a common enemy gathered in the southeastern New Mexico community of Alamogordo recently for adjoining protest rallies.

The Otero County Tea Party Patriots, the Alamogordo Second Amendment Task Force and the Sons of Liberty Riders united on the busiest corner in town to rail against all things Obama and revel in all things ballistic.

Certainly, Tea Party protests are nothing new. Angry, middle-aged white folks have been wailing they that they want "our country back" ever since the election of our nation's first black president.

But this rally had a twist. Protesters were encouraged to come armed. The Second Amendment folks thought it would be a dandy idea to dispell the nonexistent notion that all gun owners are psychopaths.

For Leslie and Ben Feilner, it wasn't enough that both of them were packing heat -- he with a .375 on his hip and she with a .454-caliber handgun. They also strapped a 9 mm pistol to their dog Rocky, along with a sign around his neck proclaiming "Bring it on Obama!"

The Tea Party Patriots -- and really, what could be more patriotic than challenging the sitting president of the United States to a gunfight with your dog -- rattled off their tiresome list of complaints.

But for Dan Woodruff, founder of Alamogordo’s Second Amendment Task Force, the event wasn't really a protest so much as a celebration.

“We want to put a positive light on gun ownership," Woodruff explained. “We want to show people that your average Joe, who goes to work and does his job, abides by the law."

That must be why they invited the Sons of Liberty Riders. What better way to present gun ownership as a wholesome, virtuous activity than by including a pack of bikers, all armed to the teeth?

Before the rally, there were concerns raised as to the safety of a political protest with guns. But the event went off without incident. An estimated crowd of 200 spent the afternoon confirming each other's hatred while admiring each other's firearms before going back home to wallow in their bitterness.

The gun-toting demonstration was all perfectly legal. New Mexico law allows gun owners to carry open weapons in public, and to carry concealed weapons with a permit.

When Obama was elected president, there was a huge run on gun shops by the misinformed who apparently believed the president had both the ability and the desire to ban guns.

In fact, the only change to federal gun laws since Obama took office is a provision tacked onto an unrelated bill that now allows people to carry guns in national parks. Gun laws throughout the nation are less restrictive now than they were a few years ago, yet the paranoia among gun owners rages unabated.

And it really is unfounded. This country loves its guns. That's why every four years the liberal, East Coast eltiist who has won the Democratic nomination for president makes a fool of himself by dressing up like Elmer Fudd and shooting some poor, caged birds set free for a photo op. Can you name the last national politican elected on an anti-gun stance?

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Speaking of guns, did you see that one of the interceptions in the college football championship game was from Gilbert to Arenas.

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When a book came out recently accusing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of commenting privately about Obama during the Democratic primary that his chances of winning were better because he was light-skinned "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted", Reid could have done what everyone else quoted in the book has done -- denied it.

Instead, he apologized to the president.

Now, Republicans are comparing his situation to that of Trent Lott in 2002 and demanding he step down as leader. Lott, speaking at a ceremony for Strom Thurmond, said the nation would have been better off he, Thurmond, a segregationist, had been elected president.

Though I'm no defender of Trent Lott, I always thought his comments were meant as nothing more than kind words to an old man in his final days, not a cry for segregrationism.

If he had been a strong, popular leader at the time of the controversy, I have no doubt that Senate Republicans would have rallied to his defense. He wasn't.

Reid isn't exactly strong or popular either. Which is why Nevada voters are likely to do in November what Senate Democrats will not do now.

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