We laugh at the birthers and mock the tea baggers. But, since Obama was elected, threats against the president multiplied by 4 timesand over 7 million gun background checks were reported by the FBI.
Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service.
The FBI says that since November more than seven million people applied for criminal background checks in order to buy weapons, a figure excluding the many more buying at thousands of gun shows in states such as Virginia, without facing any checks.
The right wing media is fanning the flames of the paranoid gun nuts. The Washington Times has gone full Godwin.
The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.
The tea party paranoids are reacting to the right wing media prompts.
Gun dealers have had shortages of bullets for months.
Selling bullets may be the most secure job in Florida as long as supplies last. After months of heavy buying, gun dealers across the state are experiencing shortages.
Some say it began with the election of President Barack Obama. Others say it's about the economic downturn or fear of crime. Whatever the reasons, ammunition has been selling like plywood and bottled water in the days before a hurricane.
Tea bagger bullies are making vague threats. Most of these vague threats are bullying to intimidate Democrats and progressives. However, some threats are real. The Secret Service must decide which ones are serious.
The Secret Service is still staffed for the lower level of threats that President Bush faced. One agent said that twice as many agents are needed.
"We have half the number of agents we need, but requests for more agents have fallen on deaf ears at headquarters," a Secret Service agent told Kessler. "Headquarters' mentality has always been, 'You can complete the mission with what you have. You're a U.S.S.S. agent'."
The Secret Service needs to be taken out of the Homeland security bureaucracy where it is lost in a sea of larger bureaucratic competitors.
The Secret Service has increasingly cut corners after it was absorbed by the new Homeland Security Department under Mr Bush. Kessler said that when Mr Biden threw the first pitch at the first Baltimore Orioles game of the 2009 season, the Secret Service did not screen any of the more than 40,000 fans, stunning his agents and the local Secret Service field office.
President Obama. Vice President Biden and all eligible officials and family members need a fully funded and staffed Secret Service to meet the increased threat levels.