Las Vegas Review-Journal - Opinion

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 from the Left after the TV cameras picked up fleeting images of these legally owned and carried civilian firearms.

Cartoonist Ted Rall writes a syndicated column. Mr. Rall's Aug. 27 column says: "Two weeks ago, a right-wing man protested outside the president's health care meeting in New Hampshire wearing a gun strapped to his leg. ... A week later, a dozen men appeared outside Obama's appearance in Phoenix brandishing loaded guns ... (including) one, who carried an AR-15 military-style automatic rifle. ...

"Make no mistake: guns don't have anything to do with health care. 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 Chris Broughton, a Phoenix machinist, the man who wore the aforementioned AR-15 slung across his back outside President Obama's Aug. 17 appearance at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, there. (Needless to say, it's the kind that fires one shot each time you pull the trigger -- 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. Chris Broughton is black.

"MSNBC actually went so far as to edit the video so they (viewers) could only see the rifle," he told me. "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 said. "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. ...

"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, racist talk.

Phoenix talk radio host Ernie Hancock, who was also armed that day, tells me that a group of marching, chanting guys carrying bullhorns and wearing SEIU T-shirts approached the corner where he and Chris were standing outside the Phoenix convention center on Aug. 17.

"They were telling people to get out of their way," Ernie says. "They acted like that was their street corner, like they had it reserved so they could stand there where the TV cameras could see them. But as soon as they saw a bunch of guys already standing on that corner, wearing guns, they got really quiet. One of the cops came up to me later and said, 'You guys did the right thing.' "

Barack Obama has thousands of guys -- many with real machine guns -- to help him promote his vision for a socialist America. But one guy with a semi-automatic, safely slung, standing outside on the sidewalk 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."