Gun activists protest Obama’s visit to Oregon
Over 200 gun-rights activists in the US have protested President Barack Obama's visit to the state of Oregon to meet with the families of victims of last week's college mass shooting.
Holding signs on Friday that said Obama was not welcome, the protesters stood outside an airport in Roseburg, Oregon where the president arrived in a helicopter and got into a limousine.
He was whisked away to a nearby high school for private conversations with victims’ families.
The protesters were angry about Obama's calls for restrictions on guns following the massacre that killed eight students and a professor at Umpqua Community College on October 1.
Some of the protesters carried signs saying Obama was not welcome and others carried handguns.
"I'm here to tell Obama he is not welcome in our county. He is exploiting the local tragedy with his gun control agenda," said Bruce Rester, a retired truck driver who was wearing a handgun in a holster over his chest.
That opinion is shared by many residents in this conservative region where it is common for people to own firearms for self-protection, hunting and target shooting.
A commonly held attitude in the area is that the solution to mass murders is more people carrying weapons, not fewer.
However, Obama has often expressed frustration that political opposition and the powerful gun lobby have prevented new gun control measures in Congress.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), firearms are the cause of death for more than 33,000 people in the United States every year, a number that includes accidental discharge, murder and suicides.
That means firearms kill more people in America every six hours than terrorist attacks did in the entire year of 2014.
Moreover, over 73,000 Americans were treated in hospitals for gun-related injuries in 2010, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
This year is on course to break records. There have been a total of 39,449 gun-related incidents and 9,940 deaths so far in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Of those, 550 were children under 13.
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