Column: Reaction to billboards with Native image overblown

Some anonymous gun-rights activists commissioned a couple of roadside billboards in Greeley to make a dramatic point about the current epidemic of gun control fever brought to its ultimate extreme. It was illustrated with an enlarged photograph set in the 1800s of three American Indians. (Personally, I prefer the term "Indians" to "Native Americans." The only true "native" Americans were dinosaurs and cockroaches. Ancestors of today's American Indians were immigrants who arrived here via the land bridge from Asia across the Bering Strait about 20,000 years ago.)

The photograph depicted an Indian chief in a tribal headdress flanked by two braves. The chief was holding a rifle across his chest. The caption: "Turn in your arms. The government will take care of you."

The "politically correct" reaction to the billboard from the usual suspects asserting their ancestral Native American credentials was as predictable as it was overwrought, self-conscious and misrepresentative. One, who said she was "livid" about it, was offended that "the Native American people" were singled out for this metaphor without their permission.