One guy with an AR-15

Touring the country to peddle his sundry collectivist schemes, President Barack Obama made stops in New Hampshire and then in Phoenix, Ariz. during the month of August.

Entry into the actual halls where Obama speaks is carefully controlled, the better to create for the TV cameras the visual image of cheering throngs, no matter what the popular feelings may be out on the street.

At several of these events, a handful of those who gathered outside the halls to protest or just to be seen wore firearms. No one got arrested, since no one waved or brandished firearms in a threatening manner. They just wore them, safely slung or holstered, which is still perfectly legal in both New Hampshire and Arizona, as well as many other states.

Some folks are wearing their guns more and more these days-especially in such public forums-to get their neighbors accustomed to seeing them. The theory, not unreasonable, is that if you don't want to lose a right, you'd better exercise it-responsibly but visibly-from time to time.

The fact that many Americans need to be re-acclimatized to the normalcy of an armed citizenry was quickly revealed by the nearly hysterical rantings of the Left after the TV cameras picked up fleeting images on these legally owned civilian firearms.

Cartoonist Ted Rall (yes, he really is a cartoonist, and often a funny one, though I don't believe the words that follow are tongue-in-cheek) writes a column that's syndicated by the Universal Press Syndicate.

Mr. Rall's Aug. 27 column begins: "Two weeks ago, a right-wing man protested outside the president's healthcare meeting in New Hampshire wearing a gun strapped to his leg. Lest we miss his point, he carried a sign that called for the shedding of blood in a new revolution."

"A week later, Mr. Rall continued, a dozen men appeared outside Obama's appearance in Phoenix brandishing loaded guns. We will forcefully resist people imposing their will on us through the strength of the majority with a vote," said one, who carried an AR-15 military-style automatic rifle. You read that right-they threatened to use guns to annul the results of the last election.

"Cops stood by and watched. The Secret Service did nothing. Strictly speaking, these mooks are allowed to openly carry guns. Which is fine with me. I'm a big fan of the Second Amendment.

"It is, however, horrifying to watch goons threaten to assassinate the President of the United States and get away with it. Make no mistake: guns don't have anything to do with healthcare. This is a revival of Klannism. A black man is president, and the good ol' boys don't like it. That's what this is about: putting him in his place. Which, if they or someone they inspire has their way, will be six feet under.

"God. The smirks those turds wear!" Mr. Rall went on. "Run a Google Image search on 'Klansmen' or 'lynching.' Same ones."

Interesting. I chatted with 28-year-old machinist Chris Broughton of Phoenix, the man who wore the aforementioned AR-15 slung across his back outside President Obama's Phoenix appearance. (Needless to say, it's the kind that fires one shot each time you pull the trigger, once charged--not an "automatic.")

Is Chris Broughton one of the "same ones" you'll find if you "Run a Google Image search on 'Klansmen' or 'lynching,'" as Mr. Rall suggests? Only if you look at the guy hanging in the tree. I doubt Mr. Broughton would get much past the first interview for membership in Ku Klux Klan. Chris Broughton is black.

The amount of fear in which firearms are held by those who are not familiar with them is clearly disproportional to the danger they represent-especially if we stop to consider how vital competitive weaponry has always been for any people that want to retain their freedom.

I mentioned I spoke to Chris Broughton on the phone, shortly after his brief "30 minutes of fame" outside the Obama appearance in Phoenix on Aug. 17.

"It was a Bushmaster carbine AR-15 Model 4, with a six-position stock and a dual trigger. I had in total 78 rounds on me: a full magazine, two loaded magazines, one in the gun with an empty chamber in the AR. I'm left-handed so I have basically cut the detent on the opposite side so I can put in the left-handed safety on all my ARs, but I had right-handed sling. I'd just bought the sling the day before, so because of that the safety ended up being away from me, not against my back, and I didn't want anyone to be able to walk up and flip off the safety, so I had the chamber empty. But my Glock 17 (9mm) was locked and loaded."

Was he surprised by the little media tempest?

"I expected maybe a little thing in the little local news. I didn't think it was going to turn into all this. It kind of caught me off guard."

Were a lot of the reporters hostile?

"The reporters don't really express their views; they just kind of ask me questions. I've just been answering the questions that they ask. I pointed out to the reporter at the AP how dumbed-down we've gotten, to the point where doing something that's legal and constitutionally guaranteed, exercising our rights, can get people so outraged, it's pretty sad."

How did the Phoenix police behave?

"There's a little squad, I think they call it the Confrontation Prevention Squad, it's their job to keep an eye on the regular officers and make sure they're not violating anyone's rights at a demonstration, so it wasn't just the average patrol officers. They handled themselves very well; very professionally."

Does Chris see more or fewer people carrying open in Phoenix, these days?

"I think it's fewer and fewer in Phoenix because a lot of people are moving in here from elsewhere. But I think Phoenix still leads the world in terms of people who openly carry as well as concealed carry. ... Apparently some people were taking photos of me and then going to the police and saying 'I just saw someone carrying a gun,' and the officers were saying 'Well, yeah, it's an open carry state.' So what I did was definitely educational.

"MSNBC actually went so far as to edit the video so they (viewers) could only see the rifle, you couldn't see if I was black or white, and then they used that video when they were talking about white supremacists and Nazis, talking about people hating a black president. They purposely cropped the picture so they couldn't see I was black as they used it over this report about dangerous racists and white supremacists. In the original video my whole body was visible in the video the whole time.

"There's one point I've been meaning to make with all these different reporters," Chris told me. "People are up in arms about me doing something perfectly legal at a time when our president is traveling the country trying to sell an unconstitutional health reform. It's pretty bad, pushing unconstitutional bills and ideas on us. How many deaths has president Obama been responsible for? How much money has he stolen from us for his bailouts and his 'stimulus'"?

"Aren't the hospitals required to treat anyone in the emergency rooms? If they weren't required to treat people then the costs wouldn't be spread to us, right? If you think about it, we already have universal health care. People are whining because health care costs are out of control. That's because the producers are paying for those who aren't producing. Universal health care will just be more of the same. If more people get free care and the rest of us pay for it then prices are going to go up, not down. Anyone can figure that out."

I guess to some that's scary, violent, racist talk.

Barack Obama has thousands of guys with guns-real machine guns-to help him promote his vision for America. But one guy with a semi-automatic, safely slung, standing outside on the sidewalk calmly answering people's questions: That's scary?

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal, and author of "Send in the Waco Killers" and the novel "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com/.