Far too often, Americans have an idea in their heads of who their political opponents really are. For people on the right, they usually picture their typical progressive opponent as some college liberal who has never had to do any real work a day in their lives. For the left, they see conservatives as backward, uneducated hicks.

Unfortunately for both, there are enough people who fit the stereotype on both sides for them to stick.

The stereotyping continues when you get down to specific issues, but there it seems to apply less and less. Especially when anti-gunners try to stereotype pro-gun folks. Especially the idea that we’re all a bunch of racists.

What’s hilarious is when someone decides to propose an effort to capitalize on that supposed racism.

Gun control advocates keep trying to change laws by appealing to our leaders’ morality, but fear has been the greatest motivator for gun reform in America.

No matter what side of the issue you fall on, people on both sides are scared. Some people want fewer guns to promote safer communities. Some people want more guns to protect themselves from the unhinged.

But 50 years ago, there was a fear so deep and visceral that it united gun rights and gun control advocates alike — too many black people owning guns.

Maybe it’s time to revisit this idea of increased gun ownership by African Americans to expose who is really for gun rights, and who just wants to have guns in the right hands.

In fact, black people should Kaitlin Bennett the crap out of social media photos inside grocery stores, on sidewalks or any place where it’s legal, like Bennett’s viral photo with an AR-10 rifle on Kent State’s campus last year.

Bennett exercised her right to carry. And if you are black and live in one of the more than 30 states where open carry is legal, then tout your weapon loud and proud.

Nothing will scare politicians and the National Rifle Association more than witnessing millions of African-Americans exercising the NRA’s vision of the Second Amendment.

Ah, this old canard.

Once upon a time, the sight of black men with guns was enough to send white gun owners scurrying for gun control. That’s an absolute fact. It was a fact for a long time, actually.

That’s because the roots of gun control have always been racist in origins. Gun control laws were enacted initially in during Reconstruction to keep guns out of the hands of recently freed slaves. They were written in such a way that they looked to apply to everyone, but legislators knew no white sheriff was going to arrest a white man for breaking such a law. It would only be applied to black men and women.

It’s an attitude that did, indeed, persist for far too long.

Yet that attitude is non-existent today. There have been groups of armed blacks who prowled around town while openly carrying firearms. Guess what happened?

Nothing.

No one really particularly cared. They might not agree with what those black men said or believed, but no one called for an end to open carry in those states. What happened more often, though, was their equipment was critiqued and, if warranted, mocked. That’s the same thing that happens when white folks go around town openly carrying firearms, too, by the way.

But I actually encourage more of the black community to own firearms and to make it known they own firearms. Make it clear that black people are heavily armed. Same for every other minority or so-called marginalized group out there. Arm LGBT folks. Arm Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans too. Arm every group.

It won’t make us start screaming for gun control, but it will likely stop anti-gun activists from holding such power within the Democratic Party. Democrats who know that these marginalized groups tend to support them would start thinking twice about alienating these new gun owners. They’d put an end to calls for gun registrations and assault weapon bans. They’d put an end to it all.

Gun owners aren’t racist. Gun rights supporters aren’t racist either.

Gun control laws, however, are and if this is how we can remind folks of that fact, I completely approve. No, it’s not what the writer intended, but then again, she thinks we’re all a bunch of knuckle-dragging rednecks who wear bedsheets for our weekend gatherings, so her judgment is questionable anyway.