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Virginia’s House of Delegates passed seven bills infringing on the rights of lawful gun owners in the Old Dominion on Thursday, all in the name of reducing gun violence. They included universal background checks prohibiting the private transfer of firearms between consenting citizens, an unconstitutional “red flag” law that violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, limiting the right of a Virginian to purchase firearms to one per month, and others.
Virginia has been moving left for years. The GOP was defending paper-thin majorities — 20 to 19 in the Senate, and 51-48 in the House. The last time a Republican won a statewide office was in 2009. Nevertheless, it took millions of dollars from anti-gun activists such as Michael Bloomberg and efforts of Chinese Communist-linked New Virginia Majority (NVM) to flip two Senate seats and three House seats from Democrat to Republican. Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, likened Bloomberg’s funding to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus for “30 pieces of silver”: “Billionaires like former NYC Mayor Bloomberg … gave Governor Northam’s statewide Democrats $1.4 million in 2017 and $2.5 million in 2019 to gain control of Virginia’s 2020 legislature. The Constitution appears to be expendable for 30 pieces of silver.”
Virginia Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn said passage of the new anti-gun legislation “will immediately prevent more senseless deaths in Virginia,” while House Majority Leader Charniele Herring called the new bills “gun violence prevention legislation” intended to “save lives.” Head of the George Soros-funded Brady Campaign, Kris Brown, called the bills “sound public policies that do not violate individual rights and will make our communities safer.”
Of course, none of this is true. The bills, variously referred to as “gun control,” “gun reform,” and “gun safety” measures, are nothing more than people control. And the people they seek to control have nothing to do with gun violence. The people who do — criminals using firearms in commission of crimes of violence — don’t obey existing laws and won’t obey the new ones.
What those criminals will do is perceive an opportunity to inflict their criminal intentions on a populace increasingly unable to defend itself, thanks to the new infringements. Virginia boasts the fourth-lowest violent crime rate in the nation. With the bills expected to be passed by the Senate and signed into law by Governor Northam shortly, the Old Dominion’s low-crime ranking is all but certain to deteriorate, at costs to be borne by law-abiding citizens.
There will be pushback, of course. There will be legal challenges. Nearly all of the state’s 95 counties have already become Second Amendment sanctuaries promising not to enforce unconstitutional laws passed by the Bloomberg/Soros/NVM Democrats in Richmond. And some of them just might take up the offer by West Virginia’s governor and legislature to secede and become part of their neighboring state.
And then there’s the next election, with cries of “remember in November” resonating among offended citizens.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between the common street criminals inflicting crimes of violence on Virginians and the political criminals now populating the governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature. They both threaten Virginians’ precious rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Photo: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
