Decius wrote:

Hijexx wrote:

Decius wrote:
2. Its cool to bring your assault rifle to Presidential speaking events. Everyone is going to be doing it.

...

On the later point, intentionally creating a nation wide "bring you assault rifle to protest rallies" fad is the most blatantly irresponsible thing that I have ever seen the national media do. If you don't want to encourage people to do something, you shouldn't put a picture of someone doing it above the fold in your nationally distributed media outlet, you idiots! This is all going no where good just about as fast as it can.

Haven't been paying attention to any news lately. What's the deal with this? People are actually bringing guns to Presidential speeches? The Secret Service allows this?

Basically, someone brought their assault rifle to an anti-obama rally outside of one of the healthcare town hall meetings and the media, instead of just ignoring him, has plastered pictures of him all over the place, thus turning it into a fad.

Generally speaking the Secret Service doesn't have a choice - these people are outside the security perimeter for the event in states that allow open carry.

It was actually reported that nearly a dozen people were packing assault weapons at that particular protest and of course, that is the accessory du jour for town hall meetings.

At first, this sounds outrageous and as Decius pointed out, really really stupid. But think about it for a minute:

if you're upset about how the government is going to embark on spending your tax dollars, wasn't the whole point of the 2nd Amendment to allow your show of force as a means to keep the government in check? I do believe we discussed this interpretation before and it changed my mind a lot about guns in the US. This is perhaps the first time I've actually seen it used in this way and it may be effective. Think about whether people showed up to protest TARP with side arms strapped?

RE: Op-Ed Columnist - Obama’s Trust Problem - NYTimes.com