GIVE TIL IT HURTS

The continued existence of this site depends entirely on contributions from its readers. If you're able to, please consider donating or subscribing to CF. Thanks!


  

THANKS!

Richmond AAR

First, I must admit to being entirely too pessimistic right along when it came to the likely outcome of this thing. Credit is due to the VCDL, who if nothing else managed to demonstrate to ordinary Virginians who may not feel as strongly as VCDL’ers do about the 2A that the real threat of violence does NOT come from law-abiding gun owners. They showed themselves to be calm, rational, reasonable Americans who are willing to expose themselves to great hazard to exercise their Constitutional rights, both First and Second, peaceably.

No, it is not in the least likely that any meaningful number of minds were changed by the protest. It’s a lead-pipe cinch that no Democrat-Socialist politicians will rethink a damned thing; they’ll be back again, and again, and again, until gun owners either knuckle under or a not-insignificant percentage of them are swinging from lampposts, or at least given a ride on a rail sporting a new tar and feather suit.

But was it worth doing anyway? I dunno; my feelings on that are a bit mixed. Looked at from a purely pragmatic angle, the protest made little or no real difference. The Democrat-Socialist gun-grabber legislation remains in play, wending its way through the Virginia legislature regardless, with more and even worse in the pipeline. A pre-Lobby Day post from Cam Edwards examines the details:

As we get closer to Virginia’s Lobby Day on Monday, I’m seeing more and more hyberbolic posts on social media about how Virginia is now under the thumb of a tyrant, misinformation about non-existent bills being signed into law, and other attempts to gain attention or stoke people’s fear and anger.

To say this isn’t helpful is an understatement. We’re currently just a few weeks into Virginia’s legislative session, and the fact is, not one bad bill has become a bad law. Nothing’s been signed by the governor yet. In fact, nothing has even gotten to his desk at the moment. We’ve had three gun control bills pass out of the Senate, but the House hasn’t even had a single committee hearing on any gun control legislation. In fact, Virginia gun owners are actually having an impact on the debate in the legislature, thanks to the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement that’s swept across the state and has led to tens of thousands of engaged citizens contacting their lawmakers to oppose Ralph Northam’s gun control agenda.

I don’t believe that Northam has the authority to institute his gun ban in Capitol Square, but unfortunately the Virginia State Supreme Court didn’t reach the merits of the case brought by VCDL and GOA. Instead, the court ruled that the groups didn’t file the necessary paperwork with the Court, and refused the petition, leaving open the question of whether or not the governor has overstepped his constitutional authority.

As for Northam’s gun control legislation, here’s where things actually stand right now…

Clearly the civic engagement of gun owners in Virginia is helping to mitigate some of the worst of these bills. We are having a positive impact on some pieces of legislation, and the Democrats are far from unified in what their gun control bills should look like. It’s one thing to cut a campaign ad promising “common sense gun safety measures.” It’s another thing entirely to actually write a piece of legislation that isn’t a total mess.

Gun owners in the state of Virginia need to keep contacting their lawmakers to politely but firmly urge them to reject Northam’s gun control agenda. Now is a time for civic engagement, not civil war. Even if the worst of these bills become horrible laws, they can and will be challenged in court. Virginia gun owners need to play the long game right now. We are making a difference at the state legislature, but that will likely change if there is any violence during Monday’s Lobby Day.

Thankfully, there wasn’t any. In another post, Edwards highlights a real jawdropper:

The Second Amendment Sanctuary movement is alive and well, even in the state of New Jersey, where Cape May County freeholders unanimously approved a resolution this week declaring the county a “sanctuary” for gun owners. As NJ.com reports, the move comes just a couple of weeks ahead of a campaign rally for President Donald Trump.

NJ.com goes on to say that “nearly half of Virginia’s counties” have declared themselves Second Amendment Sanctuaries, but according to the Virginia Citizens Defense League the current tally is 91 of Virginia’s 95 counties, along with 45 cities and towns in the state.

For now Cape May is the only county in the state to adopt such a resolution, but as the website notes, two towns in the northern part of the state adopted similar language in late 2019. Other counties and townships may soon follow.

New JERSEY? Wow. I didn’t see THAT coming. Like, ever. Who knows, maybe some few NJ fence-sitters might find the example set in Richmond this week reassuring, and inspire a gradual, step-by-step migration over to the right side of the issue.

As I said, I’m conflicted about all this. Herschel’s view is probably closest to my own at the moment:

Don’t get me wrong. I sincerely appreciate the folks who could make it today. I had initially intended to go despite my belief that it was a perfect opportunity for a false flag event. I changed my mind when I found out about the cages. I reconsidered when I saw that the rally was big enough to accommodate armed folks outside the cages, but I had to work today. I think it would have been nice to be there with like minded folks.

But this isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning.

Now the real battle begins. It’s going to be vitally important in the very near future for Virginians to know where their county Sheriff stands, or where there city police stands, and to know where their neighbors stand. The real work will be taking local county commissioners and Sheriffs out for coffee, fisking their true intentions, personal training, organizing a militia, and making sure that communities stand together when the time comes to defy the laws.

Defiance of the laws means no state agent arrests citizens for ownership of MSRs or standard capacity magazines. It means counties are sincere, clear-headed and intentional in their opposition to unconstitutional laws, and it means that they know the cost and are willing to bear it.

This will have to be done by Virginians, while everyone else tends to life back in their own communities and presses forward with the same sorts of plans. It was always going to be this way. A rally was never going to stop the controllers.

But what it does do is prepare the ground. When the state is surprised that there is armed opposition to enforcement of the gun laws, your community can honestly say, “We warned you and you didn’t listen. The warnings are finished, and froggy time has begun. Lie in the bed you made.”

Public protest is undeniably part of the blood, bone, and sinew of this nation, going all the way back to the Boston Tea Party. In more recent history, mass protest didn’t end the Vietnam War, abortion, or the war/occupation/whatever it is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Protests, marches, and rallies didn’t resolve racial discord or mend relations between the (two! TWO!) sexes. Nor have they had any discernable impact on climate change, famine in Africa, poverty in Detroit, or murder in Chicago.

But in evaluating the usefulness (if any) of the Richmond event and other such protests, surely the passage I boldfaced above is worth taking into consideration too. If the only worthwhile result of events like Monday’s Lobby Day march is to provide a little reinforcement and inspiration to our like-minded fellows—a confidence-builder, a morale-booster, however slight—well, that ain’t nothing. A little encouragement in the right place, at the right time, can lead to great things. Even a presumably trivial nudge can act on the right sort of person as a tonic of unimaginable strength.

But, to invert Herschel’s statement: this is indeed only the beginning. It cannot, MUST not, be the end. If the good feeling generated amongst gun owners by Richmond inspires them to sit back, rest on their laurels, and let their guard down, then all may well be lost. Because the only thing we know for certain is that the Left will never, ever stop.

3 thoughts on “Richmond AAR

  1. Right there with you in the first paragraph.  Crow doesn’t taste so good but I cooked it up myself and deserve every bite.

    It is a nearly a certainty that the prog/commies in the state house won’t alter course.  However, if this thing continues to its logical outcome then at least Virginians can rightfully say they tried all peaceable means.

    BZ VCDL.

  2. I freely admit to being wrong about how this would go down, and am damn’ glad that I was.

    That said, no, you weren’t “too pessimistic”, Mike. This could easily have gone the way that you, I, Aesop, Neimeier, Walker, Bracken, and others predicted.

    That it didn’t comes down entirely to the fact that Northam and the Richmond Dems blinked, not to the Richmond march being “a good idea after all”.

  3. Herschel called Richmond a morale booster.  As you put it, that ain’t nothing.  We like to say, “Fuck you and your feelings.”  Realistically, even the most steeled tacticians among “us” ought to have learned that morale matters.  Even the professionals like “a pat on the head” once in a while.  The rest of us, including me, needed Richmond to reinforce the gut-level feeling we aren’t alone in this (for whatever definition of “this” you care to apply).  If nothing else, if what you saw happen in Richmond in any way disgusted you, look at it this way: if there are useful idiots on the left, why can’t we make use of our own?

Comments are closed.

Latest Posts

Latest Comments

CF Archives

Categories

Comments policy

NOTE: In order to comment, you must be registered and approved as a CF user. Since so many user-registrations are attempted by spam-bots for their own nefarious purposes, YOUR REGISTRATION MAY BE ERRONEOUSLY DENIED.

If you are in fact a legit hooman bean desirous of registering yourself a CF user name so as to be able to comment only to find yourself caught up as collateral damage in one of my irregularly (un)scheduled sweeps for hinky registration attempts, please shoot me a kite at the email addy over in the right sidebar and let me know so’s I can get ya fixed up manually.

ALSO NOTE: You MUST use a valid, legit email address in order to successfully register, the new anti-spam software I installed last night requires it. My thanks to Barry for all his help sorting this mess out last night.

Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site and may be deleted, ridiculed, maliciously edited for purposes of mockery, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. The CF comments section is pretty free-form and rough and tumble; tolerance level for rowdiness and misbehavior is fairly high here, but is NOT without limit.

Management is under no obligation whatever to allow the comments section to be taken over and ruined by trolls, Leftists, and/or other oxygen thieves, and will take any measures deemed necessary to prevent such. Conduct yourself with the merest modicum of decorum, courtesy, and respect and you'll be fine. Pick pointless squabbles with other commenters, fling provocative personal insults, issue threats, or annoy the host (me) and...you won't.

Should you find yourself sanctioned after running afoul of the CF comments policy as stated and feel you have been wronged, please download and complete the Butthurt Report form below in quadruplicate; retain one copy for your personal records and send the others to the email address posted in the right sidebar.

Please refrain from whining, sniveling, and/or bursting into tears and waving your chubby fists around in frustrated rage, lest you suffer an aneurysm or stroke unnecessarily. Your completed form will be reviewed and your complaint addressed whenever management feels like getting around to it. Thank you.

Ye Aulde CF Blogrolle–now with RSS feeds! (where available)

"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world." ‐Henry Chinaski

Subscribe to CF!

Support options

Shameless begging

If you enjoy the site, please consider donating:

Become a CF member!

Correspondence

Email addy: mike-at-this-url dot etc
All e-mails assumed to be legitimate fodder for publication, scorn, ridicule, or other public mockery unless specified as private by the sender

Allied territory

Alternatives to shitlib social media: A few people worth following on Gab:

Fuck you

Kill one for mommy today! Click to embiggen

Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Daniel Webster

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
Donald Surber

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
Bill Whittle

Best of the best

Finest hosting service

Image swiped from The Last Refuge

2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards

RSS feed

RSS - entries - Entries
RSS - entries - Comments

Boycott the New York Times -- Read the Real News at Larwyn's Linx

Copyright © 2024