The Guns of August

Count me among those horrified that the Secret Service did not round up and detain the dozen people carrying firearms, including automatic rifles, outside President Obama's town hall event in Phoenix yesterday.

As Josh Marshall explains to a concerned reader, there are good reasons for not arresting the assholes, but the incident still raises troubling questions

First, it's important to say that not only has none of these guys tried to fire their weapon at the president (or anyone else), to the best of my knowledge none of them were within the protective perimeter of the event. In other words, at the event today, no one was in the hall where the president was speaking. They were all in crowds outside the auditorium where he was speaking -- probably across the street, or something like that.

So in a narrow sense, I'm fairly confident (I'd like to be able to say I'm totally confident but I can't) that narrowly speaking the Secret Service agents were sure that no one was a danger to the president at that distance.

SNIP

That said, I think LAG's larger point is a good one. As Chris Matthews said today in his surreal interview with Rep. Phil Gingrey (R) of Georgia, you don't take a gun somewhere unless you think there's some chance you might have occasion to use it.

SNIP

I know we have a Second Amendment. And more relevantly we may have many states where carrying an unconcealed weapon is perfectly legal. We also, thank God, have a First Amendment which guarantees freedom of expression. But put me down as not believing we should allow the brandishing of firearms in proximity of the president as an acceptable way of expressing opposition to the president. Shouldn't this be obvious?

As LAG put it, what's going on here?

Read the whole thing.