Neither was the passage of a few watered-down bad bills “death by one-thousand cuts”. The Dems had both houses and the governship. They could have passed anything they wanted, but when faced with 10s of thousands of people opposed to “gun control” they backed-off considerably. Even the Dem delegate that proposed the “assault weapons ban” was primaried out of his job later that year due to that disasterous session that gave them a huge black eye. Yes, the RINOs need to go, too, due to the compromises they make even when the Republicans have power.
There have been some set-backs in the past couple years, but a strong presence on Lobby Day, followed by emails, calls, etc., shows how serious we are. The VCDL membership increased by about 500% or more after 2019 elections, so that has helped, but numbers alone are not enough. We can’t just sit back and complain; it will then be far worse.
Our efforts to push for the sanctuary counties and to force sheriffs and board of supervisors take a vocal stance also made them realize that even if they passed it, it wouldn’t be enforced. I personally helped with 3 different counties myself, showed up to board meetings, made our presence and voices known, handed out flyers and made sure people knew when and where to be so their voices could be heard as well. We swelled what’s normally a 20-30 person BOS meeting past capacity in all 3 counties. Prince George we pretty much packed the entire building, hallways, the lobby and all. I am very thankful for all the hard work that VCDL does, but I cannot in good conscience call damage control a win, they have done the best they can with the shittily elected hand they have had to deal with the last 8 years. The gerrymandered districts don’t help any either unfortunately. Why I’m represented by Portsmouth 2 hours away makes 0 sense to me…
Actually we do know where it will take us. The STATE does not have enough resources to provide training. No training, no CCW permits. No CCW permits, no responsibly armed citizens. You mentioned California, and that is exactly what they are trying to do. There are several lawsuits in progress right now in CA specifically dealing with their prohibition for instructors.
Court cases take a very long time and a lot of money to get resolved. Imagine a 2-8 year period in which training is not available as the cases work their way through the courts.
This needs to be stopped in the house and senate, and then we need to get rid of every politician that plays these games.
Contact your delegate, senator, and governor. That’s the only way we can make a dent in these bills.
I disagree that LobbyDay 2020 had a negative influence. If we did not have that massive turnout I’m pretty sure that ALL of their proposed laws would have passed. That “assault weapon” ban that basically banned all semi-autos would have been cheerily passed by the trifecta Dem controlled House, Senate, and Governor. And once passed, we’d basically never get that repealed without a Rep controlled House, Senate, and Governor and when do you think we’ll have that opportunity again? Not anytime soon I think…
This is the core problem… getting folks out to vote and gaining control of the house, senate, governship is the only way out of this mess that Virginia is in. Until that happens, damage control or stalemates are going to be all we can manage.
We are likely to never get another 50k at a LobbyDay again.
We first have to teach them how to think before we get them to vote. If we could teach them to think we wouldn’t have to get them to vote. They would just do it. Does that make sense? Getting people to vote it they don’t know how to think seems hopeless. I just hope we can get them to think.
I have family in Va.
Let me tell you all this. We currently live in the Peoples Republic of Illinois.
Most counties in this state are overwhelmingly pro 2A, but its a fairly deep blue state because of shitcago, and open, unchecked corruption.
We have that “assault weapons” ban in effect.
Do what you can to stop your state from going down this rat hole!