BEARING ARMS

Protesting With a Semi-Automatic

A dozen people carried guns outside Obama speech.

Milling about among protesters outside a convention center in Arizona where Barack Obama was speaking on Monday, were about a dozen people carrying guns, the Associated Press reports. One of the protesters had a semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. “In Arizona, I still have some freedoms," the man said when asked why he was carrying the rifle. Increasingly, protesters have been showing up with guns at the president’s speaking events to make a statement about their Second Amendment rights. At Obama's town-hall meeting in New Hampshire, a man carried a gun strapped to his leg while holding a sign that read, "It is time to water the tree of liberty." "It's a political statement," he told The Boston Globe. "If you don't use your rights, then you lose your rights." Arizona is an "open-carry" state, where you don't need a license to carry a gun in public as long as it isn't concealed. The leader of a group against gun violence said bringing a gun to a political event “makes the situation dangerous for everyone.”