Obama Rally

PHOENIX – About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech Monday — the latest incident in which protesters have openly displayed firearms near the president.

Gun-rights advocates say they're exercising their constitutional right to bear arms and protest, while those who argue for more gun control say it could be a disaster waiting to happen.

Phoenix police said the gun-toters at Monday's event, including the man carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, didn't need permits. No crimes were committed, and no one was arrested.

The man with the rifle declined to be identified but told The Arizona Republic that he was carrying the assault weapon because he could. "In Arizona, I still have some freedoms," he said.

Phoenix police Detective J. Oliver, who monitored the man at the downtown protest, said police also wanted to make sure no one decided to harm him.

"Just by his presence and people seeing the rifle and people knowing the president was in town, it sparked a lot of emotions," Oliver said. "We were keeping peace on both ends."

Last week, during Obama's health care town hall in Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a sign reading "It is time to water the tree of liberty" stood outside with a pistol strapped to his leg.

"It's a political statement," he told The Boston Globe. "If you don't use your rights, then you lose your rights."

Police asked the man to move away from school property, but he was not arrested.

Fred Solop, a Northern Arizona University political scientist, said the incidents in New Hampshire and Arizona could signal the beginning of a disturbing trend.

"When you start to bring guns to political rallies, it does layer on another level of concern and significance," Solop said. "It actually becomes quite scary for many people. It creates a chilling effect in the ability of our society to carry on honest communication."

He said he's never heard of someone bringing an assault weapon near a presidential event. "The larger the gun, the more menacing the situation," he said.

Phoenix was Obama's last stop on a four-day tour of western states, including Montana and Colorado.

Authorities in Montana said they received no reports of anyone carrying firearms during Obama's health care town hall near Bozeman on Friday. About 1,000 people both for and against Obama converged at a protest area near the Gallatin Field Airport hangar where the event took place. One person accused of disorderly conduct was detained and released, according to the Gallatin Airport Authority.

Heather Benjamin of Denver's Mesa County sheriff's department, the lead agency during Obama's visit there, said no one was arrested.

Arizona is an "open-carry" state, which means anyone legally allowed to have a firearm can carry it in public as long as it's visible. Only someone carrying a concealed weapon is required to have a permit.

Paul Helmke, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said people should not be allowed to bring guns to events where Obama is.

"To me, this is craziness," he said. "When you bring a loaded gun, particularly a loaded assault rifle, to any political event, but particularly to one where the president is appearing, you're just making the situation dangerous for everyone."

He said people who bring guns to presidential events are distracting the Secret Service and law enforcement from protecting the president. "The more guns we see at more events like this, there's more potential for something tragic happening," he said.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said armed demonstrators in open-carry states such as Arizona and New Hampshire have little impact on security plans for the president.

"In both cases, the subject was not entering our site or otherwise attempting to," Donovan said. "They were in a designated public viewing area. The main thing to know is that they would not have been allowed inside with a weapon."

Representatives of the National Rifle Association did not return calls for comment.

Crude Oil up and down

Crude oil fell in trading Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, following a down trend on the Dow Jones. Ultimately dropping 76 cents to settle below $67, the price of crude actually rallied toward the end of the day to recover some of its earlier losses.

With intra-day trading dipping to $65.23, crude oil managed to lose only 76 cents in trading Monday to close at $66.75 on the NYMEX. Negatively affected by a loss of 200 points on the Dow Jones, the price of crude dropped nearly $2 at the beginning of the day, but it gained some strength on renewed commercial interest in gasoline later Monday.

"Early on we saw it drop over $2, which was not that surprising because we had selling coming from both sides of the market," explained Darin Newsom, senior analyst with DTN, a market information service in Omaha, Nebraska. "We had the Dow down over 200 points; so we had non-commercial traders getting out of these markets, not just crude oil, almost all commodities. Also, the underlying fundamentals are still bearish; so we had some commercial pressure."

Fundamentals in the crude oil market remain bearish with a $2 contango in the September-October contracts, pointing to an excess in supply. Nonetheless, the price of crude traded up toward the end of the day, buoyed by trading in the gasoline market.

"Interesting that we had both sides bearish early," said Newsom. "Commercial buying came back in late when the non-commercial buying seemed to die out and helped to trim the losses. Most of the support continues to come from the gasoline market."

Stress and Your Weight: Men vs. Women

A new study reports that men and women gain weight very differently when they are exposed to stressful situations. Researchers found that women gained weight when subjected to a much wider variety of stressors than did men: poor finances, tense jobs, and strained family relationships, as well as the feeling of being limited by the circumstances of their lives.

In contrast to women, men gained weight mainly in response to just two types of stress, both of them centered on work: when they lacked authority to make decisions and when they were denied the opportunity to learn new skills. Men were less likely than women to gain weight when struggling with family relationships or when upset by their lives in general.

The study, in the July 15 issue of The American Journal of Epidemiology, was from researchers at Harvard's School of Public Health, and it followed a nationally representative sample of 1,355 men and women in the United States over 9 years.

Besides these gender differences that it unearthed, the research made one other important discovery: When subjected to large amounts of psychological stress, those heaviest at the beginning of the study (e.g., a body mass index greater than 30) gained significantly more weight than did those who were closer to normal weight at the study's start. (Read How Stress Can Make You Heavy.)

Logically enough, the scientists encouraged the participants to learn stress-reduction techniques as a means to managing weight. Stress can indeed wreak havoc on health and weight. I often recommend a stress-reduction program to overweight patients.

Here are some steps to take:

• Become aware of the stressors in your life.
• Try exercise as a great stress reliever.
• Adopt a routine of deep breathing, meditation, or yoga.
• Eat a balanced, healthy diet.
• Get enough sleep--most people need at least 7 hours a night.
• Seek counseling if necessary--with a therapist to improve your relationships or with a nutritionist if your diet needs an overhaul.
• To help the body combat the effects of stress, take a high-quality multivitamin each day, one that contains plenty of antioxidants. I prefer a liquid or chewable vitamin with at least 100 percent of the recommended intakes for B vitamins and vitamin C.