Chris Mathews & the "Psycho" Gun-possessor

For the record, I did not find his possession of an UNCONCEALED handgun to be disturbing as it was not 1. Concealed or 2. Illegal [2nd Amendment]. I did, however, find it to be incredibly stupid by virtue of the nature of the crowd: he was surrounded by citizens and protesters who were all within feet and in some cases, mere inches, from his handgun. Any one of them could have easily taken it out of his holster and used it to shoot a person long before he would have had the chance to prevent it from happening.

Now you can say, why of course, and that is also the case with cops, but there's an issue with that. It assumes that the protester could easily pull a police handgun's trigger, which isn't nearly half as easy to do as with a regular handgun, and it also assumes that a police officer would be incapable of preemptively preventing it from happening. I can assure you that I bet the "armed civilian" would be less likely to unarm a man than the nearest police officer.

His action, just like that of any other person possessing a gun in close quarters, placed HIMSELF and those immediately surrounding him in danger and could easily been seen as reckless endangerment had he been in the middle of a more contentious crowd.

Now the fault I have with Chris Mathews is that eh STUPIDLY focused on the PRESIDENT and how this protector seemingly was ENDANGERING the President's life, rather than the more likely and obvious endangerment of the surrounding members of the public at large.

By repeatedly attempting to make the protector seem "UNAMERICAN" and bearing an "ULTERIOR MOTIVE," Chris Mathews missed the point and painted himself as UNDULY protective of the President to the extent that he looked as if he made it into a personal issue.


And it goes without saying, by focusing on "the history of gun possession and the assignations of US Presidents" Chris Mathews implicates the random "gun possessor" as having the intent to do harm to President Obama, which he clearly had no intention of doing. And as Justin pointed out, the President is surrounded by more armed protection that anyone else in that crowd. The odds of him being successful are EXTREMELY UNLIKELY and, again, caused Mathews to loose focus of the real issue, which was the potential endangerment of crowd-members.