US Army officer brutalized by police in Virginia.  This has just got to stop.

Gun nuts from all over the country crowded around the Virginia statehouse yesterday (on Martin Luther King Day) to protest laws that no one has proposed.  Their main objections that caused their fake outrage was that the new Democratic majority was going to…I kid you not…to “shut down the internet”, “have no-knock raids on gun owners”, and to “start confiscating everyone’s guns”.  This is in response to the state legislature’s consideration of improved background checks and limitations on the number of guns on can purchase in one month.  That’s real tyranny, right?  Generally, I find that those who parade around like this are either 1.  Criminals who can’t legally own a firearm, 2. Right wing racists who try to piss off normal people by co-opting holidays like MLK day, 3. Mentally unstable, and 4. Compensating for a physical deficiency.  Namely:

Most of said demonstrators yesterday were all dressed up in body armor, helmets, radio headsets, multiple firearms and vests that hold multiple high-capacity magazines.  Many claimed they were members of “militias”.  A news flash for these fine fellows – you’re not a member of a militia.  You are a member of an armed mob.  Militias come under federal, state and local authorities, and not just any group of idiots can dress up, and run around in the woods playing Army.  Here’s a really good explanation of the laws surrounding actual militias.

I’ve found these folks impossible to talk with about their gun obsession.  Their minds are so full on nonsense about the Second Amendment that they believe it was written to allow individual citizens to attack the government if they disagree with what their government is doing.  The Second Amendment was added for the opposite reason, which was to provide a structure for federal, state, and local governments to protect from insurrections and attacks from standing armies (like the British).  So much bullshit has been pumped into the public domain about guns that we have the result today of thousands of gun nuts protesting laws that are not proposed.  And most of the media let them get away with that.

Virginia governor Ralph Northam has declared a state of emergency in advance of a planned open carry rally in Richmond on Monday, Martin Luther King Day.  You’ll recall that the Dems took the statehouse and governor’s mansion in November, and are planning to enact common sense gun safety laws after finally ousting NRA shills who had previously controlled Virginia for years.  The response to this news by gun nuts was predictable – threaten legislators with violence if they dared do that as well as whipping up a huge rally with thousands of gun toting weirdos bussed in from all over the country galvanized by wild conspiracy theories about gun confiscations. Northam is trying to prevent the nonsense that happened at Charlottesville in 2017 when the “Unite the Right” rally turned into a melee including several so-called “militias” (they’re not) parading around playing Army dress up and confusing an already chaotic scened that resulted in one death and dozens of injuries when a white supremacist, so incensed at anti-racist demonstrators that he plowed his car into a crowd of them.

In my interactions with gun nuts I’ve always found one consistency – the level of their obsession with their “God given gun rights” is directly coordinated with their lack of qualifications to get near a firearm including criminality.  AND, these people just don’t have the common sense to understand that threatening a legislator’s or their family’s lives with gun violence is not a good way to make their case that they should be allowed to parade around in public toting an assault weapon with a loaded 30 round magazine.  It’s like trying to negotiate with a cornered badger.  There’s just no upside in even trying.