The healthcare debate is getting heated. Everyone is trying to be heard but nobody is willing to listen. “Death panels” to euthanize granny and giving healthcare to illegals are just some of the hot-button issues being passionately argued and counter-argued by members from both sides. As you can expect, there has been a lot of hollering and finger wagging from both camps. A few harsh words have been exchanged. One camp calls the other leeches and the other camp retorts by calling them ignorant haters. The President has not been spared either. Hitler, fascist and socialist are a few of the new names that the President has acquired in his brief six months in office. Some people are already complaining that the President’s names are getting too confusing and we should probably stop assigning him new names. Barack Socialist Hussein Hitler Obama is unfairly long and confusing to most Americans. Funny thing is all the shouting and hollering is not having the desired effect to some and they have therefore decided to up it a notch by bringing guns to these town hall events. “What are they talking about anyway at these town halls? Healthcare… that has nothing to do with the 2^nd amendment but I will bring my gun anyways and brandish it because it is legal to do so in the state that I live in…. “

As much as I respect the fact that these gun toting protesters want to exercise their right to bear arms, I would much rather that they exercised some common sense. Would these same people light up a cigarette in a vapor filled room, just to prove they have the right to smoke? I am a big advocate of the 2^nd Amendment and the right to own a gun as a means to protect oneself and/or others from marauding thugs and bullies but I decry the use of a gun to intimidate or imply threat of violence on innocent people.

Have the armed protesters only just become aware of their right to carry arms in the last six months or so? I am trying to remember what else could have happened within the last six months but my memory is not what it used to be. I remember there being a historic election in November and an inauguration of a new president in January but I am not sure whether the two are even related. Oh wait, the president that we inaugurated back in January was black. I think it is starting to come together for me now. Well, the gun-toting protesters will be quick to respond that their newly found hobby of arming themselves to presidential town hall events has nothing to do with the color of the president. It is not their motive to imply violence to put a black man in his place. That is the work of the Klan. So why bring guns to presidential events? Were there any guns present when then President Clinton signed the assault weapons ban? Were there any guns at Carter’s or Bush’s (both of them) town hall meetings?

It is clear that the gun toting protesters are not there to add any value to the healthcare debate. They are there to put on a show. How about making the show a little more fun for everybody then? How about thickening the plot a bit by throwing in a few more armed protestors into the mix? Let us bus in a in a few good men who happen to be armed members of the Black Panther Party to one of these meetings. You know the Black Panthers are big on that open-carry thing. Maybe we should have tried this during the last administration. A bunch of armed Black Panthers should have been there working the crowd as then President Bush was giving his “Mission Accomplished” speech. Why didn’t anybody think of this during the2008 presidential campaign? I would have loved to see Sarah Palin’s face trying to make that “pallin’ around with terrorists” speech while a group of armed Black Panthers were watching in the wings. What would have been the reaction to that? Would the NRA have come to the rescue of the Black Panthers? Has the NRA ever defended the Black Panthers?

Common sense should dictate that the way to have a civil debate would be to be respectful of all people involved. Brandishing a gun at anybody’s face will just kill the civility of the debate if not more. Maybe common sense is not so common and trying to have a debate with some people is like trying to have a conversation “with a dining room table” as one congressman would say.