ORGANIZER OF OBAMA OREGON PRO-GUN PROTEST: HE SEEMS NICE

President Obama was met by protesters yesterday when he went to Roseburg, Oregon, to meet with relatives of some of the victims of last week's school shooting:

Hundreds of irate Oregonians, toting guns and nasty signs, gave President Obama a derisive Friday welcome before he sat with relatives of last week’s college shooting victims.

“Obama Go Home” and “Go Back To Kenya” read two of the crude homemade posters held aloft by demonstrators who rolled out the rhetoric, not the red carpet for the commander-in-chief.

“He’s exploiting a local tragedy to make a political point,” griped Bruce Rester, 66, who came from Glendale, Ore., carrying a .45-caliber automatic handgun.

The protest was organized by a gentleman named Casey Runyan.

Casey Runyan, [an] activist and 2014 Republican candidate for the Oregon House of Representatives, quickly put up a Facebook page, Defend Roseburg -- Deny barack 0bama.... The organizers called for “a lot of people” to show up at the town to protest the president “politicizing the event as a conduit for increased executive orders on gun control via means of his pen, and his phone.”

As Freak Out Nation notes, Mr. Runyan has an interesting past:

The organizer of the event titled “Defend Roseburg, Deny Barack Obama,” Casey Runyan, won the Republican primary for House District 9 in Southern Oregon in July of 2014, but he was rejected by GOP leadership when he asked for support.

“The reason I am not getting any support from the Republican leadership is because of a crime that occurred,” Runyan admitted at the time.

In December 2004, Runyan was arrested on charges of driving under the influence and felony assault in which he later pleaded guilty and served eight months in county jail.

The Statesman Journal reported:

According to the incident report from the Ogemaw County Sheriff’s Office, Runyan returned to his mother’s house from a bar on the evening of Dec. 19, 2004 and woke her boyfriend, Walter Gembarowski, by punching him in the face and shouting obscenities.

“Walter woke up but was unable to do much to protect himself because the blankets restricted his movements,” according to the report. “Walter stated he could not see much due to blood getting in his eyes.”

Runyan’s mother told deputies that her son hit her in the mouth when she tried to break up the fight.

Runyan left the house, but he soon returned and punched through his mother’s bedroom window, grabbed the phone line and ripped it out while she spoke with a 911 dispatcher.

The altercation ended when Runyan, who was drunk, drove away after repeatedly kicking Gembarowski’s truck.

This conviction doesn't seem to prevent Mr. Runyan from continuing to pack heat, as Breitbart noted a couple of days ago:

One resident -- disabled Marine Casey Runyan -- said he carries a Glock handgun “everywhere he goes.” He added, “All my friends agree with me. That’s the only kind of friends I have.”

The felony conviction also didn't seem to be a problem for Runyan when he was confronted by police in 2013 for open-carrying at the Clackamas County Fair:



When the Oregon GOP refused to back Runyan's congressional bid, he insisted he was a changed man:

"I've changed my relationship with alcohol," Runyan said. "I said 'If that's what drinking like that is going to do to me, I'm not going to drink like that anymore.' "

He still enjoys an occasional beer or two at home with his wife, but Runyan said he avoids bars and people who drink with the expressed purpose of getting drunk.

But as Freak Out Nation points out, he still has a bit of an anger management problem. A couple of months ago, a man on social media grieving the death of his fifteen-year-old daughter recalled the time she'd urged him to pay for some meals for the troops; the grieving father was uncertain as to whether they were soldiers or Marines. Runyan lost it:





Runyan is -- how hould I put this? -- tightly wound. Here he is essentially telling an Oregon state senator to resign at a 2014 hearing on gun legislation:

... I am speaking here today to remind you of your limited authority. You have been overreaching in that limited authority for quite some time now, and quite honestly, I am disgusted that you still hold the seat you are in. Article Six, Clause Three of the United States Constitution requires that every state official to support the United States Constitution, not just parts of it that you think you like, and parts that you don't like. If you prefer to argue the case against the fundamental God-given inherent liberty of the people's right to bear arms and require lawful citizens to prove innocence in order to exercise it because the arms in question are not single-shot muskets, please return to your offices at the end of this hearing and mail out your senatorial messages with your feather quill pens on your parchment paper from the office of the printing press. When state officials acquiesce in unconstitutional acts, you are conniving with tyrants against your own people. And if you are conniving with tyrants against your own people so that you can keep your federal funding, then shame on you, for you're becoming so corrupt that you allow yourself to be bribed with money that your grandchildren will have to pay back. And if you connive with tyrants against your own people because you are too cowardly to stand up to them, then you need to resign the office in which you hold, and let a real man or a real woman do the job you are too coward to do....

The bill he found so intolerable was one that would have required a background check in the state before a gun transfer between individuals. If I'm following his testimony correctly, he believes that all background checks are unconstitutional.

Runyon is a member of the Oath Keepers, and also of a group called Heirs of Patrick Henry, Northwest.

Hey, maybe he should go to D.C. and declare his candidacy for Speaker of the House.