I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning. GOP Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas, bff of gun-nut and NRA board member Ted Nugent, is holding a very special meeting in the US Capitol building next week to blast President Obama and the entire notion of “gun free zones.”

Stockman’s meeting is being called “The Fallacy of Gun Free School Zones.” He’s offered legislation repealing the federal gun free zone law that protects schools.

So where is Stockman holding his meeting blasting the dangers of gun free zones? In the US Capitol building, a gun free zone.

No guns will be allowed at Stockman’s meeting in order to guarantee Rep. Stockman’s safety.

Oh the irony.

Wouldn’t Stockman be even safer if everyone attended his meeting armed? I’m so confused.

Not to mention, I worked on the Hill, and we held meetings all the time off the Hill. Stockman could have easily thrown this event at some place in town that permits guns. But he didn’t. He chose to have a PR event vilifying gun-free zones at probably the second-most famous gun-free zone in America, after the White House.

Rep. Stockman is suffering from the same gun hypocrisy that’s afflicting the uber-Republican Idaho legislature. I wrote absout them a few weeks ago. They’re the guys who so love guns that they repealed the gun-free zone protecting the state capitol building in Idaho. But of course, you know what happened next – some guy brought his gun and scared the hell out of them. Now, it’s not entirely clearly why he scared them. He simply glommed on to a Boy Scout tour of the capitol and rifled, sorry, I mean poked through a number of the legislators’ desks during the tour, in plain sight. But you see, he had a gun, and oh the panic from the GOP lawmakers after the fact.

This quote from the big ole Republican and pro-gun President Pro Tem of the Idaho Senate, Brent Hill, is priceless:

Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill said: “To think that somebody is bold enough to have followed these children around with a sidearm in plain sight — who is also bold enough to go through trash cans, take pictures of representatives’ desks and shuffle their papers — all of that created a great deal of concern.”

Went through a trash can, took a picture of a desk, and shuffled papers. Call out the National Guard! But the best part is that the pro-gun Republicans are upset that the man had “a sidearm in plain sight” of children!

Now I’m really confused. I thought these guys wanted kids around guns. Stockman, for example, is leading the charge for the NRA to repeal gun free school zones so we can put armed men and women in schools across America (even though some of them are child sex criminals, but no matter). So, in all sincerity, I don’t understand why Republicans are now suddenly so gun-shy, as it were. And remember how the NRA got all snippy that President Obama’s kids had armed Secret Service protection while the rest of America’s kids didn’t?

I thought the answer to a bad guy with a gun was a good guy with a gun – just arm everyone walking in the door of the state capitol and you should all be fine.

The proud men of the Idaho legislature and Steve Stockman are simply continuing the proud hypocrisy carried on by none other than the NRA itself, which didn’t permit guns at its annual meeting a few years back.

The NRA blames it on North Carolina state law. But that begs a pretty big question. Why would the NRA hold a gun convention in a place that they know would ban guns at the NRA convention? That would be like holding a cigar convention in a place that bans smoking. Or a gay convention in a place that bans gays. I mean, it’s not exactly not on your mind when you plan the thing.

But such is the hypocrisy of the far right. Do as they say, not as they do.

They can ban guns when they think their lives might be in danger. But when lives quite clearly are in danger, such as at Sandy Hook Elementary where 20 six- and seven- year old children were murdered in cold blood, suddenly the answer to every question become more guns, not fewer.

To call them hypocrites would be generous.