I have to confess that as much as I love to read, I’d never run across an author by the name of Allison Burnett until I was scrolling through my Twitter feed Wednesday evening and stumbled upon one of the true gems that the social media cesspool manages to spill out every now and then; a tweet so gobsmackingly racist, paternalistic, and elitist in its intent that I had to check to make sure this wasn’t some satirical account like Titania McGrath.

Nope. Allison Burnett is the real deal, and probably really, really unaware of what he’s actually saying here.

I’ve been saying this for years — that the only way to get the Right to reconsider its gun obsession is to have POC walking down our city streets legally armed to the teeth. I’m thrilled to see this. https://t.co/5PM3Evh7XT

— Allison Burnett (@Allison_Burnett) July 8, 2020

Wooo boy. Another way to put it would be “If it takes arresting every armed black protester in America to get racist conservatives to finally get on board with my gun control agenda, let’s do it!” That, uh, sounds pretty freaking racist to me, especially coming from a 61-year old white dude who wouldn’t actually be impacted by any of the gun control laws he’s calling for.

As I pointed out in my reply to Burnett, he says he’s thrilled by the sight of armed black men, but he’s thrilled for what it means for him and his cause of gun control, not what it meant for those men who were carrying guns. Burnett is thrilled because he believes the sight of armed black men will make conservatives want to ban guns, or at least the open carrying of long guns, as Ronald Reagan did when he signed the Mulford Act in 1968 as governor of California after Black Panthers openly carried firearms in the state capitol building.

I’ve got news for Burnett; it’s not going to happen. The Second Amendment community is the biggest tent going in American politics right now, and we’re not going to stand by and let any party attack the right of all the People to keep and bear arms.

Burnett, on the other hand, is okay with these guys going to prison if it means he gets his “commonsense” gun control laws. Rather than seeing them as empowered Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights, he seems to regard them as mere instruments of his own fervent desire for more gun control. Do you think Allison Burnett ever stopped to think if any of those guys might disagree with him? Or do their minds not matter?

Sadly, I think Burnett said out loud what many gun control advocates are quietly thinking to themselves. Why speak out against these armed black protesters? For consistency’s sake? Get real. They honestly think that the Right will collectively wet themselves over black men with guns, because that’s how they feel. The projection is real.

Self-defense is a human right, and the right to keep and bear arms is a right of the People. Allison Burnett may be fine with seeing black gun owners as pawns in the fight over gun control, but I guarantee you that’s not how they see themselves. In fact, I imagine some of the armed protesters might be a little ticked at the idea that Burnett was hoping to use the images of black men exercising their Second Amendment rights to push his gun control agenda. When gun owners talk about the racism inherent in gun control laws, we’re usually not provided with such an explicit example, so for that, I guess we should thank Allison Burnett for his tweet.