This article in the New York Times magazine describes a protest at the Capitol in Virginia on January 20, 2020. It is supposed to be an annual event where people peaceably assemble to exercise their Constitutional rights and express support for their causes.
But last year was different. And it raises this question: Can Americans peaceably assemble when many of them are armed with military-grade weapons that threaten those who dissent?
There are 400 million privately owned guns in America, by some estimates, and on Jan. 20, 2020, some 22,000 of their owners arrived at the State Capitol of Virginia, a neoclassical building designed by Thomas Jefferson that sits on a rolling lawn in the hilly center of downtown Richmond. The occasion was Lobby Day, a recent tradition in Virginia, held annually on Martin Luther King’s Birthday, on which citizen groups come to the Capitol to directly air their concerns to their representatives in the State Legislature. The concerns of the gun owners, who were assembled by an organization called the Virginia Citizens Defense League, were in one sense specific: They were protesting a raft of firearms-related bills the Legislature’s new Democratic majority was taking up that would tighten the state’s generally permissive gun laws. Seventy-eight counties in the state, making up the near-entirety of its rural areas, had declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” according to the V.C.D.L.
Gun owners see any restriction on guns, no matter how reasonable, as a threat to their “rights.” They are certainly unaware that the Federal Government banned the manufacture of assault weapons for civilian use in 1994.
The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act or Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) was a subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a United States federal law which included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms that were defined as assault weapons as well as certain ammunition magazines that were defined as “large capacity.”
The 10-year ban was passed by the US Congress on September 13, 1994, following a close 52–48 vote in the US Senate, and was signed into law by US President Bill Clinton on the same day. The ban applied only to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban’s enactment. It expired on September 13, 2004, in accordance with its sunset provision. Several constitutional challenges were filed against provisions of the ban, but all were rejected by the courts. There were multiple attempts to renew the ban, but none succeeded.
So there is nothing in the Constitution or in the Second Amendment that prohibits limits on the sale or manufacture of military-grade weapons to civilians.
Will Congress act again? Not likely with a Congress so evenly divided along ideological lines. Not likely with the Republican Party in thrall to the gun lobby, which opposes all restrictions. The Sandy Hook massacre of twenty babies and six staff members at an elementary school in Connecticut in 2012 did not move Congress to limit gun purchases, nor did the Parkland massacre of seventeen people in 2018. Nor did the Orlando massacre of 49 people in 2016. Nor did the Las Vegas massacre of 2017, when a lone killer murdered 60 people and injured others who were attending an outdoor concert.
What will it take?
Anyone know where I can buy a Howitzer? CBK
Catherine, I want my own drone that comes with Hellfire missiles and a 20 mm minigun.
I have been to many peaceable protests. I would not go to one where people show up with AR-15s. That squelches free speech and the right to assemble peaceably.
I have been to many peaceable protests. I would not go to one where people show up with AR-15s. That squelches free speech and the right to assemble peaceably.
How would you know ahead of time whether people would show up with AR 15’s?
Lloyd SomeDam says: “No Satan I know has eaten Democrats or worshipped children.”
NOW, you are in trouble. . . .
Have you checked Ramboslist?
SomeDam Thanks for the reference to Ramboslist. (But first, it seems I must wash my hair.) CBK
Is America becoming “A Banana Republic?”
Becoming? That banana boat set sail a long time ago.
How can we be a banana republic when we don’t grow any bananas?
We do grow lots of apples, so let’s call the U.S. the Apple Republic.
Who says we don’t grow bananas?
We have lots of Republicans who are bananas.
Yes, we have so many bananas. Nuts too.
They’re a de facto SA.
Kyle Rittenhouse is symptom of what is wrong with country, too many guns and too easy access to them. His mother must be out of her mind. What mother would drive her seventeen year old son to a protest and drop him off with a loaded automatic rifle?https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953594475/kyle-rittenhouse-accused-kenosha-shooter-pleads-not-guilty-to-all-charges
As long as cyberspace exists as a place where anarchy reigns in the name ‘free speech’, we will lose.
Excellent, but anarchy is no longer confined to cyberspace and free speech is not the same as endless displays of lies as if these are made trustworthy by repeating them over and over and over again.
Thank goodness NJ has much stricter gun laws than some of these other states. It’s just sickening that so many knuckle draggers place more importance on owning an instrument of DEATH than say, having universal health care or properly financed real PUBLIC schools. This gun mania is a fetish, a cult, these people need to get a brain and realize that the supposed holy 2nd amendment is not a right to own any gun they want. The 2nd amendment allows for rules and regulations regarding guns. For most of its history, the 2nd amendment was not about the individual right to own a gun but owning a gun within the framework of a militia (a state sanctioned militia, not one of these ad lib militias of the skin heads or neo-Nazis). Prancing and strutting around with guns and rifles in plain view is an attempt to terrorize and intimidate.
Armed protestors are making even armed protests dangerous.
What will it take? Let the left actually be radical instead of the imagined or concocted left of today, let some left wing splinter group mount an attack using garden rakes, and garden rakes will be banned quicker than a yankee can order grits.
When BLM groups launch an attack, they are quickly surrounded by riot police and arrested.
When Proud Boys mount an attack, they walk scot free. No arrests.
When the Bureau of Land Management launches an attack, it’s time to join up with the Forest Service.
As I see it, a HUGE problem is that these people with guns are so sure that they are the patriots that they are willing to use those guns, either to intimidate or possibly worse
So much misinformation out there and so very many people ready to believe it, for me it is very scary.
Just one of the things that are frightening now.
Gordon This morning, a reporter on MSNBC said he went into a grocery store in Florida . . . just to do some shopping . . . and NO ONE in the store was wearing a mask.
He showed a quick clip of an interview with the owner who asked rhetorically (paraphrased), why don’t they close stores and wear masks because people have heart attacks?
Later, they brought the question to a medical doctor and got an appropriate answer and, to their credit, all without exchanging knowing looks or breaking into maniacal laughter. CBK