Thousands rally against stricter gun control in US

Summoned via social media for the "Guns Across America" event, participants gathered Saturday for protests large and small against stricter limits sought on firearms. Only a few dozen turned out in South Dakota and a few hundred in Boise, Idaho. Some 2,000 turned out in New York and large crowds also rallied in Connecticut, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Washington state.

The rallies came on a day in which accidental shootings at gun shows in North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio left five people hurt. The wounded included two bystanders hit by shotgun pellets after a 12-gauge shotgun discharged at a show in Raleigh, N.C., as the owner unzipped its case for a law officer to check at a security entrance, authorities said. A retired deputy there also suffered a slight hand injury.

About 800 people gathered for the "Guns Across America" event in Austin, Texas, as speakers took to the microphone under a giant Texas flag stamped with one word: "Independent."

"The thing that so angers me, and I think so angers you, is that this president is using children as a human shield to advance a very liberal agenda that will do nothing to protect them," said state Rep. Steve Toth, referencing last month's elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn.

Obama recently announced the gun-control proposals in the wake of a Connecticut elementary school shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six educators last month.

Toth, a first-term Republican lawmaker from The Woodlands outside Houston, has introduced legislation to ban within Texas any future federal limits on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, though such a measure would violate the U.S. Constitution.

In Arizona, Oregon and Utah, some came with holstered handguns or rifles on their backs.

One man in Phoenix dressed as a Revolutionary War Minuteman, completing his outfit with an antique long rifle and a sign reading: "Tyrants Beware - 1776."

"We're out here because this country has some very wise founding fathers and they knew they were being oppressed when they were a British colony," said another man at the Phoenix rally, Eric Cashman. "Had they not had their firearms ... to stand up against the British, we'd still be a British colony."