SIMMONS: Showdown awaits — at high noon? — on Memorial Bridge

Second Amendment supporters beware: Cathy Lanier is talking tough — Annie Oakley tough.

The chief cop for the nation’s capital, she has promised to meet at the pass (well, Memorial Bridge) gun owners who plan to march into the District over the July Fourth holiday weekend.

While the D.C. side of the Potomac River doesn’t have the historical renown of, say, the O.K. Corral, you can be darn tootin’ that there’s gonna be a showdown in these here parts if a bunch of gun totin’ citizens cross over the city’s border bearing their loaded rifled.

Aren’t you champin’ at the bit like a Clydesdale hankerin’ for a ice-cold Bud?

Here’s the skinny.

D.C. gun laws remain as stubborn as ol’ Aunt Sarah’s mule, although the 32-year-old handgun ban was somewhat relaxed following a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Nonetheless, Chief Lanier, a sometimes tough-as-nails gal in her own right, still has to follow her boss’s lead — and her boss, Mayor Vincent C. Gray, isn’t a cowboy (wink, wink) but he is a horse thief.

Andrea Noble, ace public-safety reporter for The Washington Times, explained the anticipated standoff with armed demonstrators this way in a May 7 story:

The idea of the armed march, which would start at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and proceed across the bridge into the District — where it is illegal to carry guns on the street — was proposed by radio show host Adam Kokesh this week on his “Adam vs. The Man” show.

“This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event,” Mr. Kokesh wrote on his website. “We will march with rifles loaded and slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated and cower in submission to tyranny.”

March organizers will coordinate with law enforcement beforehand in order to determine at what point the armed marchers would risk arrest, Mr. Kokesh said.

There’s no bottom-line here, folks.

All we Second Amendment supporters are waitin’ for is to see whether the Lanier gang shows up like gang-bustin’ Elmer Fudds or trigger-happy Yosemite Sams.

Of course, we gun-rights supporters are a-hankerin’ to see if, come Independence Day, the chief marks her own words: “If you’re coming here to break the law, then we’re going to take action,” she said in an interview on News Channel 8. “There is a pretty good chance we’ll meet them on the D.C. side of the bridge.”

By the way: If, ahem, the chief really wants to put on a show that will put law-abiding citizens in a line-dancin’, hootenanny mood, then corral up the illegals who will likely be a-celebratin’ America’s birthday, too, and turn them over to the federal gov’ment.

That way, D.C. could lose it’s sanctuary status, and the Lanier gang would be in compliance as a secure community.

Those illegals ain’t hard to find. They are the ones with no driver’s licenses or other legitimate gov’ment papers.

• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.