We Americans don’t tend to tolerate royalty or royal behavior. If we did, we’d still be British subjects. But there’s a certain stench of self-importance coming from the Beltway these days, and folks are starting to get wind of it.

“The hypocrisy of the pampered political elite on the topic of personal safety is reaching breathtaking new levels,” writes the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action. “No longer content to merely deprive the citizenry of the means with which to defend themselves, politicians in some jurisdictions are depriving residents of police protection as well. All the while, these contemptible figures have shown a keen interest in making arrangements to secure their own safety.”

Let ‘em eat cake, they say.

The worst of these culprits, of course, aren’t the dying breed of old-school liberals — those who choose not to owns guns but won’t begrudge the rest of us from owning them. No, the most contemptible scoundrels are the gun-grabbers who at the same time insist that their own security detail is well armed. As the NRA continues, “Anti-gun political actors have always ignored the logical implications of their own policies. Hillary Clinton travels with a bevy of bodyguards, as did Democrat mega-donor and NRA opponent Harvey Weinstein. According to a 1986 account from United Press International one of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) private bodyguards was arrested 'when he arrived at the Capitol with two submachine guns and ammunition.’”

Now more than ever, we feel the need for security. We see the burning, the looting, the rioting, the violence. And we see the utter disregard that these — let’s call them what they are — Joe Biden voters have for law and order generally and law enforcement in particular.

We know, too, that the latest efforts by Biden and his handlers to blame the violence in our streets on President Donald Trump, and on “right-wing militias, white supremacists, [and] vigilantes,” is an utter falsehood. As Erick Erickson points out in devastating and exhaustive fashion, the Left has been driving our nation’s political unrest and violence for more than a decade. “Democrats have settled on a line that the current violence is happening in Donald Trump’s America,” he writes. “They ignore it is only happening in Democrat-controlled cities and is being committed not by Trump supporters, but by far-left activists. They move on from that point as quickly as they moved on from the attempted mass assassination of members of Congress when they found out a Bernie Bro pulled the trigger.”

Is it any wonder that August was another record month for gun sales, with a 57% increase in sales compared to August 2019? “There were at least 1.6 million sales in August 2020,” reports The Washington Free Beacon. “Only two previous Augusts had broken a million sales, though limitations in FBI reporting means that not every gun sale is captured in the data. August represents the sixth month in a row to set a new sales record with March seeing the most gun sales of any month in the history of the FBI background check system.”

The people are arming themselves for a reason. And let’s be clear: That reason has nothing to do with “right-wing militias, white supremacists, [and] vigilantes.”