‘This is people rising up. We are the good people. We follow the rules. Why can’t you leave us alone?’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Virginia Beach, Va., declared itself a “Second Amendment Constitutional City” just months after a mass shooter killed 12 people and injured four others at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center.
The City Council voted 6-4 Monday night to stand up to Democratic state lawmakers and urge them against gun control legislation, according to the Virginian-Pilot. The council stopped short of declaring itself a Second Amendment “sanctuary city”— a symbolic declaration made by dozens of other Virginia towns and counties.
It was the Virginia Beach mass shooting that state Democrats originally capitalized on as a rallying cry to push for Draconian anti-gun measures, which failed under the previously GOP-controlled legislature.
Gov. Ralph Northam—himself trying to rehab from a shocking scandal involving racist yearbook photos—immediately called for a special session on gun control, which the Republican General Assembly adjourned.
But Democrats took control of both chambers for the first time in two decades during Virginia’s state elections late last year, and they promptly announced a radical agenda that included some of the most extreme gun-control laws in the country.
Among other things, the proposed legislative package would ban so-called “assault style” weapons, require universal background checks, limit ammunition, and more.
More than 200 people attended the city council meeting on Monday, many of them wearing “Gun Saves Lives” stickers. Before the meeting even started, five council members signed onto the resolution designating Virginia Beach a “Second Amendment Constitutional City.”
“This truly is a grassroots movement,” Philip Van Cleave, the president of the pro-gun-rights Virginia Citizens Defense League, told the council. “This is people rising up. We are the good people. We follow the rules. Why can’t you leave us alone?”
Another resident, Travis Fox, said the city council’s resolution to ban carrying firearms in government buildings, which will be debated this week, is a violation of the Second Amendment.
“You think we won’t pack this building again, again, again, again and again?” Fox said during the meeting. “This is the collective voice of Virginia telling Richmond that we will not be bullied.”