Protesters, Supporters Greet President Obama In Roseburg

President Barack Obama is set to arrive in Roseburg on Friday morning.

Updated – Protesters and supporters greeted President Barack Obama during his visit to Roseburg, Oregon.

The rhetoric leading up to the President’s trip became so heated, local Roseburg officials issued a statement that the President was welcome and would be extended “every courtesy”.

“Welcome Obama”, said one sign as a handful of people waved American flags.

The president has never been popular in this corner of southern Oregon. The White House adjusted his schedule to add the Roseburg stop.

Protesters gather in Roseburg before Obama’s visit, October 9 2015.

They included two men on bicycles – Phil Benedetti and John Poole. “He’s coming here purely to push his garbage, and we don’t want it”, said Michelle Finn, who is helping to organize the protests planned for intersections near the small airport where Obama’s helicopter is expected to touch down.

“It viscerally offended me that he uses something like this to pursue his own ulterior motives – destroying this country, undermining America”, said the 62-year-old, who said he bought his first gun when he was 16 with proceeds from his paper route.

A week earlier, the president furiously denounced the killings as a symptom of a political choice by US lawmakers to bow to pressure from the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group instead of reforming gun laws.

Blackstone led his report on the President’s visit with his “potential nightmare for the Secret Service” line, and noted how protester Alan Montgomery “made no attempt to hide his holsters”. “An armed society is a polite society”, he said.

The NBC correspondent also noted that “Roseburg has heard the argument before”. “Other signs include “Prayers Not Politics” and “In Memory of the Fallen” and “#Roseburg Strong”. She recalled that he had asked two people if they were Christians; she thought they said “yes” and that he killed them. “We all know what that agenda is: gun control“.

Poole, a retired property developer from Klamath Falls, said he too believes in the Second Amendment right to carry arms but also supports “rational, common sense gun laws”.

Harper-Mercer killed nine people and wounded nine others.

The college reopened Monday and counselors have been on campus to help students, faculty and staff deal with the trauma that all of Roseburg is feeling.

A few minutes after he landed, he was on his way to Roseburg, then another few minutes once he returned on his way to Seattle.

Obama did not make any public appearances during his short stay in the southwest Oregon town of 22,000.

“We’re going to have to come together as a country to see how we can prevent these issues from taking place” so regularly, Mr Obama said after the hour-long, private meeting with grieving relatives of those who killed and injured.