You’ve most likely heard about the big gun rally planned at the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond on Monday, but perhaps you don’t know all the who, why, and what-for of it.
Why?
You mean, apart from the fact that a handful of gun nuts care more about their right to own an arsenal than they care about their own children? Well, pull up a chair, my friends. After the 2018 elections when both chambers of the Virginia legislature flipped from a republican majority to a democratic one, one of the priorities was to pass some meaningful gun legislation. Now, it wasn’t as if they were banning assault weapons, or taking away people’s guns. The proposed legislation has only three parts:
- Limit the purchase of handguns to one per person per month
- Require background checks for gun buyers with certain exceptions
- Allow local governments to ban guns in parks and public buildings
Two things should be noted … First, 80% of the people in this country support gun regulations such as these, and Second, these are only common-sense measures … nothing that requires gun owners to give up their currently-owned guns, nothing that stops people from buying guns … simple, common-sense measures that might actually save a few lives.
But …
A group calling themselves ‘Virginia Citizen’s Defense League’, a misnomer if ever I’ve heard one, has taken umbrage. And thus, they are planning a rally at the State Capitol that has attracted the riff-raff and gun-toting scum in and outside of the state. The rally has drawn the attention of militia groups from as far away as Nevada and Oklahoma, including those tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League.
Others vowing to attend include individuals associated with the Light Foot Militia, some of whom were banned from Charlottesville after the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, which ended in the death of a counterprotester. Richard B. Spencer, a prominent white nationalist who is among 24 defendants in a lawsuit over the rally in Charlottesville, also said he might attend.
So far, Virginia’s Governor Ralph Northam has declared a ‘state of emergency’ and banned guns from the capitol building and grounds, and the FBI has arrested three neo-Nazis linked to the ‘Base’, a group that aims to create a white ethnostate. Chatter picked up on Facebook and in chat rooms by the FBI indicates that various extremist organizations are calling Monday’s rally the “boogaloo.” In the lexicon of white supremacists, that is an event that will accelerate the race war they have anticipated for decades.
These people, folks, do NOT represent the population of the United States. They are an extreme minority, and yet …
“They are fanning the flames for this event. They want chaos.”
The three bills will almost certainly pass the legislature, and Governor Northam has already promised to sign them into law, and yet these gun-loving people (and I use the term ‘people’ loosely here) are determined to bring chaos into the capitol. If I had to guess, I would guess there will be violence and there will be injuries, if not deaths.
Let me quote for you the text, word for word, of that 2nd Amendment they so love …
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Twenty-seven words. Nowhere does it say that every household should have the right to own a gun. Nowhere does it say that people have the right to own high-powered, automatic weapons that can mow down hundreds within minutes. Nowhere does it say that people have a right to keep an arsenal in their garages. The framers’ language was vague, but their intent was not. Their intent was not for John Doe to have the right to carry a gun into the grocery store and start shooting, nor for a family in the suburbs to keep a loaded pistol in their home. People have so broadly interpreted this that any law that has the word “firearm” in it automatically riles the gun-lovers. If I were given the task of making revisions to update the Constitution, the 2nd Amendment and the electoral college would be on the chopping block.
Now, to add insult to injury, the fool that sits in the Oval Office felt a need to ring in on the subject. Now, as president, he might have used his office to call for calm, to call for the rally to be canceled, or to urge people to keep the protest peaceful, right? But noooooo … he tweeted …
“Your 2nd Amendment is under very serious attack in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia. That’s what happens when you vote for Democrats, they will take your guns away. Republicans will win Virginia in 2020. Thank you Dems!”
This from the so-called “president” of a nation of 330 million people. Keep your eye on Virginia tomorrow, my friends, because this may well be a harbinger of things to come.
Peter Yarrow, the ‘Peter’ of Peter, Paul & Mary, wrote the song in 1958 before he joined the group. It started with a poem his roommate, Lenny Lipton, left in his typewriter …