The Virginia gun rally: “terrorism” on US soil?
So much for the hysterical predictions, said Dan Gainor on FoxNews.com. From the media coverage ahead of last week’s protest by gun rights activists in the Virginian capital of Richmond, you’d have thought we were facing “the start of the second civil war”. There were all sorts of blood-curdling warnings about “white nationalists” armed to the teeth and threatening insurrection. In the event, we got “a rally so peaceful that the protesters even picked up their own trash”. The crowd was demonstrating against a package of new gun restrictions under consideration by the new Democratic majority in the state’s legislature. And quite right, too, said the Washington Examiner. The measures would “make a mockery of due process and create more barriers for law-abiding citizens to exercise” their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Yes, this protest was not as bad as some feared, said Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer. But don’t you dare call it “peaceful”. There were 22,000 people – many dressed in camouflage and masks, bearing assault rifles and even grenade launchers – gathered outside the seat of the state government. Local businesses shuttered their doors, and many residents left out of fear of what might happen. The event took place on Martin Luther King Day, a holiday that Virginia has in recent years declared a “Lobby Day”, when citizens can air their grievances to legislators; yet no other demonstrators dared turn up. The protest may not have been lethal, but to the extent that it intimidated lawmakers and scared other citizens out of exercising their own right to free speech, it was “arguably the most successful use of terrorism on US soil in nearly a generation”.
You can just imagine the response if this rally had been organised by left-wing protesters or black nationalists, said Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times. But white men still have the power to get away with it. The irony is that these gun-toting people are scared, said Petula Dvorak in The Washington Post. Many fear that a “red flag” law allowing weapons to be temporarily removed from troubled individuals is part of a plot to disarm them. But two-thirds of all gun deaths in Virginia are suicides, and most of those who kill themselves are rural white males over the age of 45 – almost exactly the demographic at the rally. “Think about it, guys. The biggest thing you have to fear, when it comes to guns, is yourselves.”