Okay, so there’s this group running around Texas with enough ammo to declare war on Venezuela who have found a way to live the rock band life without the bother of musical instruments.

They originated in Murietta, California, and they call themselves Operation Secure Our Border.

Mostly, though, they raise suspicions and money.

Note this headline on their website with a big DONATE NOW sign next to it:

Well, that would certainly scare the crap outta me.‘Cept it never happened. Bud Kennedy at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram jumped on top of it.

The moneygrubbing “border volunteers” on their way here to play soldier published a dramatic fund-raising pitch Monday about how Texas is a “war zone” and how they barely escaped cartel gunmen who supposedly surrounded the Van Horn Comfort Inn.

That didn’t ring true to folks in Van Horn.

For starters, there is no Van Horn Comfort Inn.

“If Mexican cartels had surrounded a hotel, we would have had a few phone calls,” Sheriff Oscar Carrillo said Tuesday, accusing conspiracy promoter Eric Odom and the Murrieta, Calif.-based Border Convoy group of making up the entire story.

Wait, wait, they made up a story to raise money? What are they? The O Henry of Gun Fetishes?And they are pestering local law enforcement.

Carrillo confirmed that the sheriff’s office had one phone call from the convoy Monday morning about 5:30. A caller giving the name Pete Santilli reported “somebody following them,” Carrillo said, but could not give a description.Santilli is a Utah-based online talk host and entertainer.

Dude, how do you know someone is following you if you can’t give a description? You’re being followed by invisible stuff? Hell, even zombies can be described.

The El Paso County Judge pretty much got it right …

Last week, El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar wrote in The New York Times that the idea of an ongoing border crime crisis is a “myth” contrived for the fall elections.

“It’s untrue and it’s hamful,” she said by phone.“They use the same playbook over and over again, because it’s red meat for conservatives in the rest of the country. It looks real good to come down to Texas and fly helicopters or wave guns at the border. But it hurts us.”

But the Gun Fetish Tour continues along the border because it gets attention, makes money, and scares poop out of some guy in Des Moines, Iowa, that the Mexicans are coming to get him. Helluva business.

By the way, according to their website, this is how the renegade posse views themselves –

I just checked and it’s going to be 103 degrees in McAllen and Laredo today so … good luck with that heat stroke thing, guys.