Obama Oregon Visit: Confederate Flags, Armed Protesters Greet President's Meeting With Shooting Victims' Families

President Barack Obama was not enthusiastically welcomed as he traveled from an Oregon airport Friday to meet with families of victims from the Umpqua Community College shooting. Instead, Confederate flags and anti-Obama signs greeted the president as his motorcade made its way to Roseburg High School in Roseburg.

Several hundred people swarmed outside the gate of the airport where some carried signs, according to a White House report. The signs' messages? "Please leave us in peace," "We support our Sheriff," "Gun Free Zones are for sitting ducks," "Obama is wrong" and "Nothing Trumps Our Liberty."

In a press office travel report, Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe said about half of the people who had gathered were there to welcome Obama to Oregon. "The other half were negative or seemed to be protesting his calls to action to tighten the nation's gun laws," he wrote in the email. "That's a rough estimate."

Local residents organized the protest ahead of his arrival in a Facebook event page for the protest titled "Defend Roseburg -- Deny barack 0bama." The page featured a graphic of a welcome mat plastered with the words "NOT WELCOME!" The protest was prompted by Obama's remarks on Oct. 1 in a press conference responding to the massacre that killed eight students and one professor.

"Polarizing as usual, Mr Obama has insisted on politicizing the event as a conduit for increased executive orders on gun control via means of his pen, and his phone," the event page said.

Some of the protesters who had gathered brought holstered guns to further drive home their stance on gun control. Others, such as two men from Klamath Falls, Oregon, brought Confederate flags.

"Got to stay strong and don't give up on America," the two men told the Oregon News-Review Today.

"My family, my friends, everybody down here is not happy about him coming," Michelle Finn, a Umpqua alumna and Roseburg native, told the Oregonian. "He already says he's going to politicize this -- he's already going to push his agenda.

Portland news station KGW reporter, Nina Mehlaf, shared photos from the anti-Obama rally Friday showing protesters with signs that said "Go back to Kenya!" and "Christian Lives Matter."