“When the vast majority of Virginia counties declare themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries and tell the government to back off, the Senate, the House of Delegates, and Democrat governor Ralph Northam need to pull their heads out of the sand and take notice. They need to listen to their fellow citizens, and then they need to burn and bury that bill. To pass it into law in the face of such resistance is not only an act of tyranny. It’s just plain old stupid.”
And its corollary:
“The Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia features an armed Roman goddess of virtue standing with her foot on top of a fallen figure representing tyranny. Above her is the state motto Sic Semper Tyrannis, which translates: ‘Thus always to tyrants’.”
Unfortunately governments have been known to do lots of stupid things in the past. I’d encourage people to look at the history of America’s great “social experiment” of the last century – namely the Volstead Act and the prohibition of alcohol. This movement was originated by upper middle class women “for the children” and had major anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant themes. As you read prohibitionist literature from that era you see not so subtle references to “drunken Irishmen” and “wine drinking Papists” as if no Protestant ever took a drink.
The Prohibition movement drove alcohol consumption underground and created a generation of people who for the most part ignored the laws against drink. I would submit that many Americans, particularly those of Scots Irish heritage, have a culture of simply ignoring or actively opposing laws that they disagree with.
The prohibition of alcohol simply didn’t work despite the efforts of nice church ladies who wanted to bring in the millennial Kingdom where the lion laid down with the lamb. One might question how the ban on recreational drugs has worked out although that’s a discussion for another day. This is from a guy who lives in a red state (Oklahoma) where “medical” marijuana is now legal.
Back to the question of the proposed gun bans in Virginia. We’ve got the equivalent of the church ladies who don’t have anything better to do with their time proposing to cure all of the ills of society with one magic pill. A hundred years ago the pill was to do away with strong drink, despite the fact that lots of people were thirsty. Today the pill is to do away with guns, despite the fact that there are major constitutional and cultural problems with such a proposal.
The idiots who propose to kick doors and call out the national guard should remember that the people who oppose them are the cultural or literal descendants of the “over mountain men” who were fiercely against government of any sort on general principles. They’re the people who have a history of making whiskey and shooting at the tax man. They have a long history of disrespect, impertinence, and independence – and they have most of the guns.
One can only hope that the leaders of Virginia will stop and think just a bit before they stir things up, but I don’t have a lot of faith in that given the track record of government bodies to do incredibly stupid things in the name of the public good.
To these disconnected factors of the Democrat party enacting hard-handed gun control upon a population like Virginia’s is the status signal equivalent of a hot little platinum blonde with eyes like two clown cars full of crazy. I would not underestimate their determination to stick their collective dick in it.
Would Ralph Northam feel the same way if these cities and towns were declaring themselves to be sanctuary cities for illegal aliens?
What’s the difference, Ralphie? Some laws are more equal than others?
Money. As long as Soros is pulling the string they will blindly go forward ignoring the people. Soros is not happy is escaped one failing regime he wants to do it again. Once he passes a lot of what we are seeing will go away I hope.
God doesn’t want him, and the Devil is afraid he’ll take over. He’ll outlast the Queen of England.
Not Soros. This is Bloomberg’s stunt. He spent big money buying the Virginia legislature for the Dems.
A man who needs his taxes raised…considerably. The Navy needs new ships.
Any Constitutional lawyers in the house?
This wide spread opposition by Counties strikes me as a way to contest “Baker vs Carr”, and kill the cities domination of political discourse. The intent of Baker vs Carr was to give “equal ” representation , and eliminate the “inequality” of having the state senators appointed per county, instead of by population. This has created a situation whereby the cities , democrat controlled in almost all instances, dictate policies statewide. Seems to me it it is pretty clear that with 90% of the counties objecting, “equal representation” is absent.
There is a constitutional provision for parts of a state to form a new state. Two current states, Maine and West Virginia were actually formed this way. It takes approval from the legislature and Congress so it gets tangled up in both state level and national level politics. There are current movements under way in CA, NV, WA, IL and perhaps more to do exactly that. West Virginia was irregular because of Civil War One. The seceding counties constituted themselves as the Virginia legislature (because the state of Virginia had seceded) and petitioned Congress for admission.
Virginia has a bicameral legislature, where the House of Delegates is akin to the House of Representatives in the Federal legislature, the representatives allotted in districts with approximately the same population; a house of the people.
The Federal Senate, where there are two representatives per state regardless of that state’s population, gives equal voice to small population states vs. large population states, leveling the field.
However, in Virginia, the Senate is nothing but a smaller group selected just like the House by districts of more or less equal population with no regard to county or city boundaries or discreet political entities; i.e., just another gaggle of popular representatives. If political units like the counties and cities wanted real non-population related power, then each should have a senator in the Virginia Senate, just as each state has senators to represent it.
Change that representation to individual political entities and this 2A sanctuary by counties movement would have real weight against the high population, small geographic areas loaded with liberals sucking off the government teat. They center around university areas like Charlottesville, center of government cities and their suburbs in Northern VA, and the heavily military spending areas in Tidewater, where hundreds of thousands of contractors and suppliers depend on government spending and union jobs.
That’ll never happen, since the powers that be want to keep what they have.
In fact, if the Virginia Senate were representing each county with a senator, these anti-gun laws wouldn’t stand a chance of even leaving committee.