If Alex Jones was really the conspiracy expert which he claims to be, instead of just huckstering to the crowd that believes the aliens landed in Area 51, he would take a look at the way in which Gun-nut Nation develops and puts out its messaging, because he would discover that it starts and ends at the same place. And that place happens to be the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where Donald ‘I could shoot someone in the street’ Trump is trying to change his tune on violence and guns.

I said last week that Trump’s muted and respectful response to the shooting of Steve Scalise and others represented an awareness that his dwindling base doesn’t provide enough traction to get his political agenda through Congress, never mind keep him from getting burned by Russiagate. And his foolish attempt to promote himself by posting a tweet about a Rasmussen 50% score, a poll result which went south the very next day, can’t hide the fact that unless he starts appealing to folks outside of his crazy base, he’s all done.

So now it’s almost a week since the ‘good guys’ with guns in Alexandria turned out to be cops instead of civilians, but that didn’t stop John Lott from going on a right-wing noise-making radio show and saying how important it was to have people with guns on the scene. And it really doesn’t matter whether those guns belong to cops who may actually be trained to use lethal defense, or belong to civilians who aren’t required to undergo any training at all. And if the gun is in the hands of a ‘good guy,’ then everything’s going to be okay. I know, it’s as dumb as you can get.

But when it comes to real dumbness, this week’s award has to go to none other than Ted Nugent, who figured out how to prolong his career by creating a new standard for saying dumb and stupid things about violence and guns. And I don’t mean a high standard because here’s a guy who’s so friggin’ dumb that he posted pictures of gun-control politicians on his Facebook page, all of whom happened to be Jewish, adorned each pic with an Israeli flag, and then claimed he didn’t ‘know’ that something so tasteless would be taken as an anti-Semitic slur.

Anyway, this jackass has now publicly disowned every hateful and nasty remark he ever made, and has promised to tone down his remarks, become ‘more respectful to the other side,’ and if “it gets fiery, if it gets hateful, I’m going away.” What? The man who told Obama to suck his you-know-what is pulling back from the rhetorical venom which Trump imitated again and again during the 2016 campaign?

This can only be happening because the alt-right has realized that since they now own the White House, that their brand of hate won’t sell. Oh, it will still sell to the ‘make America great again’ crowd that will line up at Trump rallies and buy the hats and other overpriced paraphernalia which generates revenues for the Trump Organization bottom line. But that’s not going to work with the rest of us, and it’s the rest of us who will ultimately determine whether Trump keeps his job or not.

So now we have a report that Chris Collins (R-NY) whose announcement that he will always go around with his gun marks him as one of the dopiest schmucks in the U. S. House, is now crafting a bill to protect lawmakers from getting shot, and he’s doing it with help from the NRA. Perfect, just perfect. The NRA, which wants no restrictions of any kind on concealed-carry, is going to help write legislation that will make it easier for jerks like Rep. Collins to walk around DC with a gun. But this is a ‘responsible’ way to react to a mass shooting, right? And ‘responsible’ is now what Donald Trump is all about.