We’ll keep and eye on this during the day…..
The capital of Virginia was bustling on Monday as the city braced for the highly publicized gun rights rally, organized to oppose a series of gun-control measures making their way through the Legislature. The rally got underway around 11 a.m. and lasted until shortly after noon.
White supremacists, members of antigovernment militias and other extremists have said they planned to be in Richmond for the rally as well, stoking fears of the sort of violence that left one person dead and some two dozen others injured during a far-right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
Hoping to head off trouble, the state has set up a security perimeter around the Capitol grounds and has banned weapons — including firearms — from the area inside. Police officers guarded the area with the help of bomb-sniffing dogs, and people entering the perimeter through the single entrance were being screened with metal detectors.
Even so, plenty of demonstrators came armed to Richmond, and officials worried that confrontations could develop just outside that entrance or in the surrounding streets, where weapons will still be allowed.
Rally speakers include a plaintiff in a landmark gun-rights case.
The landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision holding that the Second Amendment protected an individual’s right to keep and bear arms is known as the Heller decision, after Dick Heller, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that overturned a gun-control law in the District of Columbia.
When Mr. Heller addressed the rally in Richmond on Monday, the crowd listened with rapt attention.
He got a big reaction when he quoted part of the amendment’s text: “Let’s yell it to them, so the media and left legislature can hear it: The right of the people to keep and bear arms will not be infringed!” The crowd roared the end of the sentence along with him.
And when he asked the crowd, “Do we need gun control in Virginia?,” the crowd roared back, “No!”
Another speaker, Sheriff Scott Jenkins of Culpeper County, Va., who has long been outspoken in advocating gun rights, told the crowd, “I ask that you all return to your homes and ask your elected officials, where is the line they will not cross?”
After the official speeches, as people began to leave the secure perimeter, participants made impromptu speeches in the street, denouncing abortion and the governor in addition to gun control. Some participants picked up litter and scraped discarded orange “Guns save lives” stickers off the pavement. “No confiscation! No registration!” the crowd chanted….