Richmond Dodges a Bullet As Smaller Crowd of Extremists Protest

The city of Richmond and the Commonwealth of Virginia dodge a bullet - literally and figuratively - as a much smaller than predicted crowd of gun extremist protesters - many from out side of Virginia - descended on the Virginia Capitol in an effort to intimidate members of the General Assembly.  Promoters had raved about 100,000 pro-gun nuts attending the rally, but police estimates place the crowd at a little over 20% of that number.  Thankfully, no violence occurred, probably largely due to the preemptive action of Governor Northam in banning guns from the Capitol grounds.  Plus, one needs to keep in mind that those who descended on Richmond are an aberration and/or outsiders given that recent polls confirm that the vast majority of Virginians want the gun control measures now before the General Assembly.  As the a column in the Washington Post aptly notes, what today's gun rally really demonstrated was the fear (and I would argue sexual inadequacy) that motivates the attendees who, based on their looks, my late New Orleans southern belle grandmother would have described as "white trash" - the lowest of the low in her book.  Fear of a loss of white privilege.  Fear of a changing world and society. Fear of a loss of white male dominance. They rant about the Second Amendment, but beneath that, something is going on that suggests that something is seriously wrong with these protesters. Here are highlights from the Post column:

Y'all, it smelled like fear out here in Virginia.

Scores of men — plus a handful of women — dressed up in battle rattle and draped themselves with assault weapons, long guns and handguns on Monday. They strapped hunting knives to their thighs and wore body armor and body cameras on their chests, shoulders and helmets. To a rally. A peaceful rally. On city streets in a quiet state capital on a holiday weekend.

That’s a uniform of fear, right there.

Fear of having to pass a background check if they want to buy a gun from a private individual?  Fear of not being able to buy more than one handgun every month?

Fear of not being able to carry an AR-15 across your chest to a county fair that doesn’t want your weapon aboard the Tilt-a-Whirl?

Fear of getting help taking a gun away from your suicidal son?

Because those are all the restrictions on guns that the Virginia [Senate]  passed last week.
The outsized turnout, vigor and rancor in Richmond on Monday — thousands of demonstrators filled the Capitol grounds and surrounding streets — is a reaction based on fear, not fact.

And the fear is all about a loss of power.

“It happened like that,” a man dressed in full camo with a handgun strapped to his hip told his friend, snapping his finger. “We were good for years, then the left took over and they’re going to take our guns away. Virginia is the home of the NRA. They want to run them out, too.”

Most law-abiding, regular old Virginians could still have a weapon — many weapons, even — under the common-sense legislation that the new Democratic majority in Richmond is passing.

Huge assault weapons strapped across chests and backs knocked against each other in the port-a-potty lines. Some walked in a masked phalanx, bookended by German shepherds.
One group pushed through crowds in a conga line of camo and Carhartt, holding on to each other as they muscled through a crush of people. “Racist, white supremacists coming through,” one line leader bellowed, laughing, like everyone should know he really isn’t racist.

All of the men I talked to were also solidly opposed to “red-flag laws,” which allow a concerned family member or the police to ask for the temporary removal of weapons from someone who may be dangerous to themselves or others.

“I can just tell the cops that a guy I hate is dangerous, and they’ll go take all his guns. It can happen to me,” one guy told me.

Nope. That may be what he fears. But the red-flag law requires a state court to be petitioned and a judge to weigh in on whether taking the gun is appropriate.

Let me spell it out: The people who lobby for red-flag laws are usually those who lost a loved one to suicide.

Thirty percent of gun deaths in Virginia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are homicides.

A much larger percentage — 67 percent of all gun deaths in the state — are suicides.

The suicide-by-gun rate — about two a day in Virginia — takes primarily rural, white males over the age of 45, according to numbers compiled by America’s Health Rankings. And veterans are 1.5 times as likely to take their lives in Virginia.

That almost perfectly describes the demographic at the gun rally in Richmond.

Think about it, guys. The biggest thing you have to fear, when it comes to guns, is yourselves, actually.