Virginia Supreme Court Leaves Governor’s Capitol Gun Ban in Place freebeacon.com/issues/virgini…
The legal case against Governor Northam's temporary gun ban remains unresolved but there's no more time to block it before Monday since the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. VCDL is asking ralliers to comply with the ban and promising to follow up the case after Monday.
The Virginia Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the suit. Instead, they said there wasn't enough information about the lower court's ruling to determine if it should be overturned. So, there is still a possibility that the gun-rights groups could eventually prevail.
When you hear dire predictions of violence at Monday's gun-rights rally just remember there have been over 100 similar events attended by tens of thousands of people across Virginia over the last two months without a single violent incident reported at any of them.
The Governor claims there are threats for Monday's event and the FBI did arrest three violent extremists who may have planned to attend the event but that isn't in any way a guarantee of violence. Violence would be a the worst outcome for the interests of gun-rights activists.
The desire to prevent another Charlottesville disaster is good and understandable but I would point out that Monday's rally isn't remotely set up in the same way. Charlottesville was an event set up by violent racists which was negligently allowed to devolve into violence.
Charlottesville also had counter-protesters who were there with the purpose of confronting the racist marchers. The potential for violence was very high and the event was poorly policed.
Monday's rally was set up by a legitimate gun-rights group to lobby for gun rights and no other purpose. No organizer has called for violence. There are no counter-protesters poised to physically confront the rally-goers.
There are legitimate concerns about fringe extremists trying to glom on to the event and instigate violence but that's a very different situation since, if they show up at all, they will be a very small percentage of the people there and police should be very prepared for that.
Essentially all of the marchers in Charlottesville were violent extremists. It's very possible none of the people at Monday's rally will be violent extremists. There has been no violence in the 2A sanctuary movement and there is no reasonable justification for violence on Monday.
