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.

Without Changes to America's Gun Laws, "Thoughts and Prayers" Are a Fraud

Each time America witnesses another mass shooting with it seems an ever growing number of people murdered, we hear the same bloviating about "thoughts and prayers" for the dead and their traumatized families and friends. This nauseating refrain comes most often from politicians - especially Republicans - who could reduce future carnage if they but had the balls to say "no" to the gun manufacturer lobby and its front organization, the NRA.   Tellingly, as The Hill is reporting, here in Virginia where we have state wide elections next month, the NRA has delayed running its $1 million political ad campaign attacking Democrats who support gun control and supporting the Republican ticket that wants even looser and more irresponsible gun legislation in Virginia:

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has delayed political advertisements in Virginia in the wake of a mass shooting in Las Vegas that left at least 59 people dead and more than 520 injured.

The nation’s largest gun rights organization had originally booked $32,000 in cable television advertising to begin Tuesday, according to Advertising Analytics, a nonpartisan ad-buying firm that keeps tabs on the television market. 

Now, those advertisements will begin on Oct. 10. At the same time, the NRA will devote just more than $1 million to ads airing on broadcast networks in markets around Virginia.  

I propose any easy litmus test for who is sincere in their mealy mouthed statements about "thoughts and prayers" for the dead and their families:  are they accepting money from the NRA or allowing themselves to be backed by the NRA?  If the answer is "yes." then you know that they do not mean a word of their disingenuous statements.  A column in the Chicago Sun Times sums the situation well.  Here are highlights:

Did you see the video? Did you see country music singer Jason Aldean, his guitar slung over shoulders, standing front and center when the gunfire began? He knew that sound, that staccato rip of mass-produced death. He fled for the safety of the back of the stage, and the crowd screamed and people were hit and bled and died, and nobody could be sure where the gunfire was coming from. At last check, 59 people were dead from the bullets that flew during a country music show in Las Vegas. Five-hundred-plus more were injured. By the time you read this, more likely will have died. [W]e know that sound, that ripping of bullets from a single indefensible weapon designed for nothing else. Not for hunting. Not for defending our homes. Not for target practice.

Automatic and semi-automatic guns are designed to kill people by the bunches — and this one on this night did its job superbly.

We are so damn sad. We can’t begin to express our sorrow for all the people who were killed in Las Vegas, even as we slept so soundly in our beds in the Midwest. We are beginning to hear their names, see photos of their faces, and they could be any of us — they are any of us. Nice folks out for a night of music, our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors. Dead now. Do we feel survivor’s guilt? We should.

The president offers his condolences. For what it’s worth. And there will be prayers and funeral services. For what they’re worth.

And politicians in the pocket of the gun lobby, tons of them, will stand on the floor of the House and the Senate and say how tragic this shooting was and how something must be done — but don’t punish the law-abiding gun owner because guns are American freedom, guns are apple pie, guns are the flag, guns are the national anthem.

And they won’t tell you that every honest opinion poll for a generation in this country shows Americans are sick to death of the carnage.

The National Rifle Association hates those polls. Guns are money for them. Gun-makers make them rich.

[W]e have called for saner gun laws time and again, only for the gun nuts to twist the message: The crazy liberal media wants to take your guns!

So let’s make two points clear:

• Most of America, to judge by the polls, wants to take illegally obtained guns away from bad people — the drug-dealers and the gang-bangers. Not legally obtained guns from decent people, but illegally obtained guns from bad people. And that means better licensing of gun stores and a ban on the easy sale of weapons at gun shows and garage sales. Seriously: people buy guns in many parts of America, legally, at garage sales.

• Most of America also wants to ban access to semi-automatic and automatic weapons.

The guns that killed in Aurora and at Virginia Tech and Newtown and Umpqua College and San Bernardino and . . .

In June, the Washington Post did the arithmetic and reported that 889 men, women and children have been killed in mass shootings in the United States since Aug. 1, 1966. . . .
 After 50 years, we are closing in on 1,000 deaths from mass shootings. The Las Vegas tally gets us almost there.

Are we properly horrified yet? Will we do something finally? Will we honor the dead in Las Vegas by, at long last, demanding gun sanity?  If we continue to do nothing, all our tears [and thoughts and prayers] are a fraud.

A piece in the Washington Post looks at some of the dead.  Take a good look at the faces and brief bios of those who died.  Then grasp the realize that every politician who has opposed sane gun control laws and a ban on assault weapons played a role in this carnage and has blood on their hands.