I was pretty tired when I came home today. I turned on the news and saw there was a pro-gun / anti-Obama rally that was going to happen at the state capitol. Tired as I was I had to go there and record the event. I grabbed my camera and headed down.

I would say the crowd was about 500 people or more at its largest. News crews from all the local stations were there. I guess I was supposed to feel safe in the area, since more than three quarters of the people were carrying guns. Men, women, children and dogs (yes dogs) were carrying guns. Some people were in cammo clothes, some were in suits. There were some people who were wearing V for Vendetta masks, proving they got their marching orders about the mask from watching the Occupy Wall Street people and the movie. I’m sure if they had bothered to actually read the comic they would think differently about the mask.

The reason I didn’t feel safe in the crowd wasn’t because I didn’t have a gun. I won’t start an argument trying to compare the gun to manhood, but in listening to the conversations people were having, there was a sense in the crowd that the government was hell bent on taking their guns. There was a feeling I got they figured they could hold off the state or the federal government if they had to. It reminded me of cosplayers I see at a convention. They paraded around with weapons but I’m not sure if push came to shove if they could offer any real resistance.

I have a number of other photos of the rally in the photo section.

Update: 2/17/2013

I was very tired yesterday when I came home from the anti-Obama / pro-gun rally and I wanted to make sure I got the pictures out fast. While I gave a short observation about the rally, I wanted to revisit and expand on some of the things I saw yesterday.

It may have been from poor press information (I only heard about the rally from a 30 second blurb on one local station) I was struck by how few opposition people were at the rally. By few I mean none. Our politics are very polarized and it seems when people are set in a way of thinking they don’t want to hear information challenging that thought. This is a left and right issue. When the Occupy movement was in Phoenix, there were very few who were against their position who bothered to investigate what the Occupy movement was all about. They had their notion and they were sticking to it. The same can be said of those who aren’t pro-gun. I guess the argument could be said that they can get information from the news, but locally I saw all the stations coverage of the rally and at the most the coverage was 45 seconds. I heard some of the old women proponents commenting they didn’t think the news would cover the event.

I was there for a couple of hours, along with other members of the press and I would argue I gave more coverage of the event with the pictures I posted than they did with a broadcast network. They showed a few people with guns but the pictures I took I’m sure gave a lot of people the magnitude of the weapons at the rally. We’re not talking a few people carrying guns. If there is a crowd of over 500 people and you have 3/4th of the men, women and children with weapons, that is a significant number.

Here’s something I just thought about. When I covered the Occupy Phoenix events, and this was well after the massive march they initially had, in the month that followed there might be, at most 50 people gathering in the park for the occupation. These were unarmed people sitting in a park. On any given day there would be 2-3 police cars in the area and possibly five uniformed officers and a few plain clothes officers. Conservatively you would have 10 police officers covering 50 unarmed people. There were over 500 people at the pro-gun rally with 3/4th of the them carrying guns. The guns weren’t concealed, and a few were dressed in cammo gear. Beer belly guts were straining to hold pistols. Kids in suits who looked like they belonged at a comic book convention had rifles. There were little girls who had pink BB guns.

There was one police officer on scene.

Think about it. Fifty people with no guns at a peaceful takeover of a park warrants close to 10 officers. A rally with 500 people and over 300 of them with multiple weapons, people who are openly opposed to the President of the United States, and one officer is there to keep the peace. That is a reason why I think it’s important for people on all sides to see what is going on. When you had to Occupy rallies and the strong police presence, this was said to be something that was done with all protests. When people have protested for changes in immigration laws there is a strong police presence. They don’t carry guns and are peaceful but the police are out in force. A pro-gun rally with anti-Obama sentiments where people have real weapons and one officer is there. There was no checkpoint at the gun rally, so you didn’t know if the guns were loaded or not. We’re just supposed to trust they were unloaded.

One thing that disturbed me were the amount of women who had weapons. Actually, on par with the women with weapons had to be the amount of people who I saw with guns that I didn’t think should have them. The crowd at the rally wasn’t a young crowd. We aren’t talking a huge amount of military people recently out of the military who are still in that mentality. If you watched who they interviewed on local news you would get that impression, and again the local press was there for a number of hours and had interviewed a number of people, that there were a lot of people under 30 at the rally. The vast majority of people were in the 40s and up. They were clinging to their guns and bibles because they don’t like the direction this country is going in.

If I had been asked questions I would have answered them truthfully, but I spent most of the time listening to conversations. I had a few people try to get me to wear yellow ribbons (everyone has to have a ribbon) and there were things I wanted to say about the ribbon but I kept my mouth shut. Let’s be real, there were people there with guns! The rally was anti-Obama. There was one guy (thankfully only one) who was proudly flying the Confederate flag and I did listen to him say how proud he was of the flag. This was said in a revolutionary way, like when the country falls I’m going to bring back the Southern values sort of way. There was no way I was going to get into a debate with these folks without knowing what I could and couldn’t say to them.

Going to the rally was eye-opening. I know there will be another rally in the future and I will conduct interviews at that time but I have to say the gun people scare me. They righteously believe they are correct, and of course they have the firepower to back up their side even if they are in the wrong. While I doubt anyone in law enforcement would admit it, but the police are key in making these folks believe they are in the right. When you sent one officer to observe a crowd of over 500 with many of them displaying weapons, some possibly loaded, yet a sit in at a park with 50 unarmed protesters and you send almost 10 officers to observe them, what kind of message does that send? I heard many at the pro-gun anti-Obama rally complain how their free speech and rights to bear arms are violated. I didn’t see them get pepper sprayed, I didn’t see them given false information about where they could rally so they could be arrested. For complaining about rights being violated, it seems they got their message across without any government intervention.