More Gun-Toting Protesters At Obama Events

About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, stood among protesters outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix on Monday, according to the Associated Press.

Although the media reported that several people brought guns to the event, the main image shown on the news was of an African American man, who declined to give his name to reporters, as he walked around a with a pistol on his hip and an AR-15 semi-automatic assault weapon on a strap over his shoulder.

When asked why he was carrying the weapons, he told reporters: "Because I can do it...In Arizona, I still have some freedoms," he said. In a television interview broadcast later in the day on CNN, the man said he comes from another state where "open carry" is legal, but he was "exercising his rights as an American in Arizona."

There was no indication in some of the news reports as to whether the African American man supported or opposed the president's health care reform plan, but in one video on YouTube the man was shown walking among a group of pro-health care advocates, while law enforcement officers kept a close eye on him.

In another news interview, the man told a reporter that he is "absolutely totally opposed to health care in this way in this manner, stealing it from people. I don't think that's appropriate," he said. One YouTube blogger suggested that the man was actually an "ACORN activist" posing as a right-wing gun nut. But there was no evidence to support that claim, and in a separate YouTube video, the man espoused clearly conservative views, not only about health care, but about Second Amendment rights. 

"It seems to me like the most violent places in the country are the places that have the strictest gun laws," the man said, citing Washington, DC as an example. "DC is a very violent place, and they're the worst on guns," he said

It's also not known if the dozen other people the media reported who were carrying guns were white, but the news footage of the event focused primarily on the black man with weapons.

Arizona is an "open-carry'" state, which means that anyone legally allowed to have a gun can carry it in public as long as it's visible.

Gun sales have reportedly increased dramatically since President Obama was elected, and the Secret Service has been working hard to protect the nation's first black president. CNN's White House reporter Ed Henry told anchor Rick Sanchez on Monday that he could not recall any incident in which people brought guns to an event for President George W. Bush.

Unlike the Clinton White House, the Obama administration has not pursued any major gun control measures since taking office, and has not actively pushed to renew the assault weapons ban. Clinton signed the ban into law in 1994 and it expired in 2004. But some gun owners fear the president will take away their guns, a fear that CNN anchor Lou Dobbs seemed to encourage in a program earlier this year.

In another Lou Dobbs interview broadcast on Monday, Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation agreed that the man at the Phoenix rally should not have carried his gun to the rally as he did. "I'm all for carrying firearms, I'm all for open carry, but I think there's an appropriate time and place to do so."

Gottlieb did say that if he were at the rally he would have had a handgun "concealed" on him. "I would prefer to keep it concealed and protected, and I have the element of surprise on my side," he said.

The Phoenix incident could be part of a new trend of anti-Obama demonstrators bringing weapons to presidential events. Last week a man was arrested at the site of Obama's New Hampshire town hall meeting after he was found to be in possession of an unlicensed loaded gun.

Later that day, a man was shown on television carrying a handgun strapped to his leg. The man held a sign referencing a quotation from Thomas Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."