White guys with guns on public land versus blacks without guns on public streets

The free-Bundy protest going on in Oregon is very strange to me when I try to look at it from all sides and analyze the statements being made by various groups.

First of all, every time I hear the leader of this armed self-proclaimed "militia" say "we just want this to end peacefully" I think to myself 2 questions:

1. Then why did you bring guns?
2. Then just leave?

It just seems so inaccurate and insincere.  But I have to realize that this group of people actually thinks the big bad government is going to come and shoot them in the dark of night when nobody is looking.  As ridiculous as that sounds to me, as hard to believe, they believe it and therefore they feel they need to arm themselves, even though the simple act of arming one's self for protection raises the stakes, raises tensions, and increases the chance of an armed stand off.  

There's a reason that peaceful protests, historically, tend to be sans-weapons.  It helps bring people to your cause if you're not being aggressive and instead being passively and politely steadfast.  Bringing a weapon intrinsically adds to your aggressive-level, regardless of how many times you insist the weapons are not meant to be aggressive but instead be defensive.

And then there's the left-wing response: an attempt to compare this protest to other peaceful protests that have happened recently.  Most of the protests have been peaceful, some arrests but no major injuries.  But when it's mostly blacks protesting in their own neighborhoods, they have often been called riots by the media and major politicians.  Sure, there have also been riots, but those have been significantly fewer and smaller than the peaceful marches and gatherings in these communities.  The left then pointed out that in Texas, when several biker gangs had a shootout amongst themselves and with law enforcement, the media called it a brawl... not a riot, a brawl.  People on the left raised the point of the disparity in descriptions and pointed to it as part of the implicit bias/racism we have in the media.  And now, while there has been no violence, people on the left have raised their voices with the belief that the media would have called the "militia groups" something else if they weren't white, maybe mobs, anarchists, armed militants.  Maybe the "occupation" would be called a riot by the media.  Maybe the result of a week-long protest would have been armed confrontation by local, state, and federal law enforcement rather than state and federal law enforcement being nowhere to be seen or heard and the local government officials requesting that the groups leave.  

There has been the explanation that law enforcement considers this protest to be more a kin to scenarios like Wako where armed engagement led to outcomes that reflected negatively on law enforcement in the past, with casualties and such.  This, to me, is an explanation that rings very true.  Of course law enforcement wants to be careful due to these memories of armed conflicts.  Of course they feel the stigma.  That is a reasonable explanation for why they are giving these armed white militants a wide berth.  But that doesn't mean this response isn't intrinsically racist, just because it's rational.  Here's the problem with saying it's reasonable to react differently to the scenario given the past:

1. It indicates that the public's reaction when law enforcement locks down a city, or sections of a city, with riot-gear-armed officers and shooting rock/brick-armed civilians, that the public's reaction to this is not sufficient to be nearly the same as the public's reaction to law enforcement having a confrontation with gun-armed civilians.  Yes, the latter tends to involve deaths, but this is the natural reaction of increased weaponry being brought to the table on the civilians' side since it intensifies the conflict.  Not, I mention the increased weaponry brought by civilians, that's because the weaponry being brought by law enforcement in both scenarios is of a similar level at this point.
2. It indicates that being armed and white is appropriate when protesting while it's been proven by law enforcement's responses (and the public's as well) that being armed and black is completely inappropriate, to the point of allowing a defense of immediate and summary execution of the armed civilians.

The dichotomy is disturbing to me, to say the least.  

I feel for the ranchers who are worried that the big bad government is going to restrict their land usage even further, thus they feel their livelihoods are endangered, but the protest is about people being imprisoned for arson... I'd love to hear someone explain why setting a fire that one did not sufficiently contain to avoid a fire on public lands is reasonable and why people who commit a crime under the law should not be held accountable based on the law and existing mandatory minimums.  I haven't heard them call for an end to mandatory minimums, which are the reason that two ranchers have been sent back to prison (the original sentences were less than the mandatory minimum requirements for the crime committed).

So, when my gut tells me that these people are ridiculous and that law enforcement continues to show racial bias, I think I've provided rational explanation of how my gut, at least in this instance is correct... which is a relief to me, as I do not want to shoot from the hip on these matters (always like to throw in a gun metaphor when appropriate).