As you're probably aware, the core belief behind the Bundy standoff in Nevada and the Bundy occupation in Oregon is their belief that federal land actually belongs to them and they should not have to pay for using it.
While not every Republican in the western United States is willing to take up arms against the government to conquer the land, this view is widely shared among many elected officials including the likes of Idaho state Representative Ken Ivory (R).
Representative Ivory recently compared their desire to seize federal land to the struggle for civil rights.
“Our system does not work if you have a back-of-the-bus class of states,” Ivory told E&E News.
[Rep. Ivory] is the director of an organization funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch that aims to dispose of America’s national forests, monuments, and other public lands. Ivory is also the former head of the American Lands Council, an organization that, under his leadership, was the subject of ethics complaints as it lobbied politicians to transfer U.S. public lands to state and private control.
This grotesque comparison may make more than zero sense if white conservative lawmakers sought to return control of the land to Native American tribes, but that is not their goal. They want the land for themselves. They want control so they can auction it off to the highest bidder.
States do not have the money or resources to maintain the tens of millions of acres of land owned by the federal government, but maintaining it isn't their wish. They want to plunder it.
This isn't a quest for civil rights, it's a movement of aspiring freeloaders who want to get rich off land that doesn't belong to them and never did.