Remember that Virginia gun rights rally that was supposed to be some neo-Nazi boogaloo? Yeah, it wasn’t that. There aren’t that many neo-Nazis in the country, nor are there hordes of white nationalists. These people have always been here, an extreme minority trying to find life in other people’s causes. What happened in Richmond was peaceful. It got the message through don’t mess with Americans’ Second Amendment rights. The Virginia Citizens Defense League organizes this event every year at the start of the new legislative session. It wasn’t really out of the ordinary. The only difference is besides around 1,000 people coming, tens of thousands showed up. Now, these folks were supposed to be horrible Nazis who spread violence and mayhem week before this event. It truly is a wonderful place to know when you’re right and watch from afar as the narrative the left-wing dolts in media have manufactured is trashed within minutes. An even greater part is watching their smug self-righteousness get wiped off their faces when it happens.
There was not a single arrest at this rally. There were no Confederate flags (I don’t count three as widespread use), no swastikas, but apparently this event was not peaceful, so says Talia Lavin in GQ:
Incredible interview and he’s 100% right.
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) January 21, 2020
Watching the media desperately try to find even an instance of violence in this protest of 22,000 peaceful patriots was pathetic. I wish they would have as much scrutiny of an antifa protest/riot! pic.twitter.com/p87zHroyWD
WATCH:
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 20, 2020
Reporter: Why do you think it’s important for women to exercise the #SecondAmendment?
Richmond 2nd Amendment really attendee: “It’s definitely very important especially for women because it keeps us safe. I think that’s fundamental.”
pic.twitter.com/cJqO9XkXBg
One woman's sign directly addresses the people accusing the #VirginiaRally of being a "white nationalist" or racist gathering. pic.twitter.com/jeFjPZedDp
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) January 20, 2020
No one was shot—a frankly extraordinary turn of events given the sheer amount of weaponry, the density of the crowd, and the weapons stuffed casually into backpacks or held loosely in the crooks of pale arms. This happy vicissitude of fate led right-wing groups to declare the event a triumph—in the words of fringe-right publications Gateway Pundit and InfoWars, a “peaceful protest.” Mainstream media, too, bought into this analysis: “Pro-gun rally by thousands in Virginia ends peacefully,” was the assessment of the Washington Post. Having made Northam the butt of their rhetorical ire during the rally, conservative groups further condemned his choice to declare a state of emergency in the state’s capital: “Gov. Northam fantasizes he saved Virginia from volatile situation,” crowed a headline at Breitbart.
All this confidence belied the fact that bloodshed—great and heavy and perhaps unprecedented on American soil—was narrowly averted. A federal motion for detention released Tuesday revealed that three members of neo-Nazi terror group The Base had planned to attend Monday’s rally in Virginia, kitted out with a home-built, functioning fully-automatic rifle capable of firing several rounds at a time; survival gear; and 1,500 rounds of ammunition. They had planned to open fire into the crowd.
According to the affidavit, one of the men had postulated that there were enough “radicalized” individuals slated to be in Richmond that “all you gotta do is start making things go wrong and Virginia can spiral out to fucking full blown civil war.”
[…]
But even with the Base threat—which was thoroughly ignored by right-wing media—neutralized, it seems myopic at best to describe the Monday event as “peaceful.” There was, it was true, an absence of immediate bloodshed; but what abounded, in that armed and insurrectionist sea of humanity, was the promise that bloodshed might happen at any time, should the will of the mob be thwarted. America’s exceptional tolerance towards armed white gunmen—its brooking of gun-toting militias around the country, and the po-faced seriousness with which the media takes claims of “freedom” when it comes to the right to own weapons of mass slaughter—is entirely restricted to this demographic.
Oh, my lord, where to begin with this nonsense. The fact that law-abiding citizens don’t go off half-cocked, spool for a fight, or are irresponsible with their firearms goes right over her head. The identity politics angle is just garbage. Gun rights are universal to every American. There were Asians, blacks, pot smokers, and even pro-LGBT folks there. There was that memorable sign, “I want gay married couples to be able to protect their marijuana plants with guns.”
So, obviously Lavin wasn’t there, which is something that our own Julio Rosas pointed out; he was there. As was the Washington Free Beacon’s, Stephen Gutowski. Yet, please keep in mind that Lavin was forced out of her so-called fact-checking job at the New Yorker after falsely accusing an ICE agent of having a Nazi tattoo. It wasn’t. the ICE agent was a veteran of the war in Afghanistan and the tattoo was a symbol of the platoon he served under during the conflict. Lavin was out of a job at the publication in June of 2018over this rake-stepping incident:
Justin Gaertner is a combat wounded U.S. Marine who continues to serve his country as an ICE computer forensics analyst, helping solve criminal cases & rescue abused children. The tattoo shown here is the symbol for his platoon while he fought in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/BaOBxaAMHS
— ICE (@ICEgov) June 18, 2018
When New Yorker fact-checker Talia Lavin posted a series of photos on Twitter mistakenly implying that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent had a Nazi tattoo, she was quickly informed of her error. So she deleted her tweet, and explained why in a follow-up. Within a week, she found herself resigning from her job.
“I just feel like I made a small mistake and it’s destroyed my life,” Lavin told the Cut…
Only a liberal would go off half-cocked unlike the tens of thousands of law-abiding gun owners who descended on Richmond to voice their concerns about Al Jolson’s, excuse me—Gov. Ralph Northam’s anti-gun agenda.
This is major eyeroll material, but one that will certainly be eaten up by the snobby condescending progressives the dominate the professional Left.
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