VIRGINIA has a sad chapter in it's history of treason and there are some in the Commonwealth who still prefer the traitor's rag over the American flag. Since the electorate voted the Democratic Party into power in the 2019 election unpatriotic, pro-fascist militias like oath keepers, three percent security force, and virginia citizens defense league have been planning to meet up with neo-nazi white supremacist hate groups like the base for a potentially explosive march on Richmond on 20 JAN protesting the gun regulations backed by the governor and Democratic controlled assembly. We should all pray for a peaceful gathering in Richmond and for the protection of all law enforcement officers who will be on duty. From WSET 13 NEWS, the Washington Post and NPR.....
3 gun bills, including one handgun a month law, pass Virginia Senate
RICHMOND, Va. (WSET) -- Virginia lawmakers in the Virginia Senate have passed three gun measures, sending to the House for consideration.
The three bills include requiring background checks on all firearm sales, limiting gun purchases to one in a 30-day period, and allowing localities to ban guns from public events.
SB 35, which would allow localities to ban guns from public events, actually would repeal the current law that restricts localities from enforcing ordinances that would prohibit the purchase, possession, transfer, ownership, carry, storage, or transport of firearms or ammunition.
SB 69, amends the current law, only allowing Virginia residents to purchase one handgun a month, or in a 30-day period.
And, SB 70 requires a background check on all private transfers of firearms.
All three bills were passed along party lines.
Democrats said they were reasonable measures that would improve public safety while respecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners. They said the public had made clear by voting for Democrats in recent elections that new gun laws were needed.
Republicans decried the legislation as an assault on the Second Amendment launched to appease special interest groups and donors such as Democratic presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg. GOP senators said the new laws would entrap innocent people and do nothing to stop bad actors.
"This may be what you think is safety, but it is not," said Republican Sen. Bill Stanley.
One bill, SB 16, was struck from the record, which included the ban on assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, bump stocks and silencers.
The NRA released a statement following the approval of the slew of gun bills.
Regrettably, Virginia lawmakers approved a series of measures today that will make it harder for law-abiding Virginians to protect themselves, while doing nothing to stop criminals. We are pleased one of the most egregious gun confiscation bills was pulled from consideration. The NRA will continue our work with lawmakers to find solutions that address the root cause of violent crime, rather than punishing honest, hardworking Virginians.
Governor Ralph Northam has a package of gun legislation that he's pushing for that include prohibiting all individuals subject to final protective orders from possessing firearms, requiring that lost and stolen firearms be reported to law enforcement within 24 hours, and creating an Extreme Risk Protective Order.
Other legislation that has been filed includes banning indoor shooting ranges at offices where there are more than 50 employees. That would include a shooting range at the NRA headquarters, which is located in northern Virginia. That bill has been referred to the Committee on Public Safety.
Republicans and gun-rights groups have pledged stiff resistance.
More than 100 counties, cities, and towns have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries and vowed to oppose any new "unconstitutional restrictions" on guns.
A pro-gun rally is scheduled for the capitol on Monday, but a judge has upheld a complete weapons ban for the event and Virginia will be under a temporary state of emergency until Tuesday at 5 p.m.
Prospect of gun control in Virginia draws threats, promise of armed protest
Jan. 5, 2020 at 9:38 p.m. EST
Unlike blue bastions such as California and New York, Virginia is a former Confederate state with strong rural traditions and lax gun laws. Guns represent the strongest, reddest line against the demographic changes that have seen Old Dominion voters usher in a new era of Democratic leadership in recent elections.
And so a Nevada-based group called the Oath Keepers said it’s sending training teams to help form posses and militia in Virginia. The leader of a Georgia militia called Three Percent Security Force has posted videos and calls to arms on Facebook, urging “patriots” to converge on Richmond. The right-wing YouTuber “American Joe Show” warned without evidence that Virginia will cut the power grid to stop the army of protesters — one of a host of false and exaggerated rumors spreading online.
Law enforcement and public safety officials say they are monitoring the situation, including several instances of threats toward Gov. Ralph Northam (D). Even some gun enthusiasts expressed concern about the potential for violence at a rally planned for the state Capitol on Jan. 20. State police briefed Northam for two hours last week, according to one state official, and the governor plans to lead an all-staff meeting this week to go over increased security procedures.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League, the grass-roots organization planning the rally, said it has told the state to prepare for as many as 50,000 or even 100,000 people showing up.
Police do not dismiss those projections. But at least so far, they have not seen indications that turnout will be that high.
“Do we look at these numbers seriously? It certainly behooves us to prepare for all possibilities,” Capitol Police spokesman Joe Macenka said.
Lawmakers said they have been in regular contact with state, city and Capitol police, and VCDL president Philip Van Cleave said he is keeping lines of communication open so all sides are prepared.
“Hopefully it’ll not be another Charlottesville,” Van Cleave said, blaming police and state planning for the violence that erupted during 2017’s Unite the Right rally around a Confederate statue. Counterprotester Heather Heyer was killed when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of people.
Van Cleave has appealed to his supporters not to come bristling with intimidating long guns — including assault-style rifles such as the AR-15 — and politely suggested that militia members are welcome but do not need to provide security. Police will take care of that, he said, “not to mention enough citizens armed with handguns to take over a modern midsized country.”
That firepower is a concern for gun-control advocates, who also plan to turn out on Jan. 20 — Martin Luther King Jr. Day — for what is a traditional day of citizen lobbying at the state Capitol.
“There’s a dangerous intersection here of speech and guns, and what I think is critically important is that we don’t see the sort of armed intimidation and even violence that resulted . . . in Charlottesville,” said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel and policy director at Giffords Law Center.
Democratic lawmakers who now control both houses of the General Assembly are considering making rules changes to limit where guns can be carried when the legislature convenes on Wednesday.
Visitors are currently allowed to bring guns onto Capitol Square and — with a concealed-weapons permit — into the Capitol itself and the adjacent Pocahontas Building. Firearms are even permitted in the House gallery, though the Senate gallery is off- limits.
The possibility of having to enforce a ban at entrances to public spaces is another uncertainty facing Capitol Police.
“We’re in a wait-and-see mode,” Macenka said. “It is not our job to draft these kinds of regulations. We enforce the law and we will do this to the best of our ability.”
Democrats won their majorities in November elections, ending a 26-year period where Republicans were able to quash any proposed restrictions on guns. After 12 people were killed at a Virginia Beach municipal building by a gunman on May 31, Northam vowed to pass some form of gun control.
Northam called a special session of the legislature on July 9 to take up the issue, but Republican leaders adjourned after 90 minutes without debating any bills. Advocates on both sides of the gun debate took over Capitol Square that day, with one side toting guns and the other chanting protests or wearing red Moms Demand Action T-shirts.
Afterward, Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) issued an opinion that militia members presenting themselves as peacekeepers could be violating state law.
The Jan. 20 event could be on a far bigger scale. Van Cleave said his organization typically charters three buses to bring in scores of advocates for Lobby Day; this year, he has already chartered 23 buses and other groups have reserved 28 — and the number is climbing, he said.
Attention has been building since the Nov. 5 elections as the Second Amendment sanctuary movement has swept across the state. Beginning in rural counties, boards of supervisors — usually with hundreds of local residents looking on — have passed resolutions proclaiming that they would not enforce any unconstitutional effort to seize or restrict guns.
Tazewell County in Southwest Virginia went a step further, passing an ordinance that would enable it to raise a militia.
More than 110 Virginia counties, towns and cities have passed some type of sanctuary resolution in the past couple of months. The rapid spread was fanned by an escalation of rhetoric online.
“Virginia is the state that is testing this unlawful, unconstitutional, Second Amendment gun grab,” Chris Hill, founder of Three Percent Security Force, said in a YouTube video. “If this is where it begins, then this is where it will end.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Hill’s organization an anti-government extremist group. In an interview Friday, Hill said that his militia is not a hate group and predicted any violence on the 20th would come from left-wing “antifa” activists or MS-13 gang members.
Among the wilder rumors spreading online is that United Nations “disarmament officers” have descended on Virginia. A photo of white U.N. trucks being transported on a flatbed, purportedly shot on I-81 near Lexington on Dec. 30, has been making the rounds.
“UN vehicles in Virginia to assist with shock-troop gun control!” read a tweet from someone called Catholic Charismatic. “Photo captured yesterday! Foreign troops! Retweet this vigorously.”
The post got 4,000 retweets even though the photo has been circulating online since at least 2016. The fact-checking website Snopes.com debunked a similar U.N.-takeover theory sparked by the photo that year, determining the vehicles had been manufactured in Virginia by Alpine Armoring and were being shipped overseas.
Early in December, Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.) responded to the Second Amendment sanctuary movement by suggesting in an interview that Northam might have to call out the National Guard to enforce gun laws.
Online, that turned into a false claim that Northam has actually called out the National Guard.
“Absolutely not,” Northam spokeswoman Alena Yarmosky said.
The commander of the Virginia National Guard, Maj. Gen. Timothy P. Williams, issued a statement that the organization had received “multiple questions” about its role in gun enforcement but that the governor had made no such requests. Nonetheless, Williams seemed to feed the frenzy when he included in his statement, “we will not speculate about the possible use of the Virginia National Guard.”
One white supremacist blogger wrote a widely disseminated post claiming that Northam planned to call out the Guard and cut power and Internet service to thwart gun supporters.
That led to a meme with a fabricated quote in which Northam is made to say, “if you still refuse to comply I’ll have you killed.”
Both Snopes.com and PolitiFact have debunked the claims, but the falsehoods have reverberated in efforts to summon gun supporters to Richmond. Some of the comments in social media or on the Reddit thread r/VAGuns have turned menacing.
The conspiracy theory site Natural News posted an angry tirade about Northam, accusing him of starting a new civil war and suggesting vigilantes would kill any officials who tried to take their guns.
An anti-Semitic website said Jewish Democrats were “gun-grabbers,” including former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, the presidential candidate whose gun-control organization has poured millions into Virginia.
State officials declined to directly address the threats. “Our Administration is taking serious precautions to protect the safety of all visitors, policymakers, and staff during the upcoming General Assembly session,” Clark Mercer, Northam’s chief of staff, said via email. “This issue evokes strong feelings, but spreading lies, rumors, and misinformation is irresponsible and dangerous. All legislators and advocates have an obligation to tell the truth and not irresponsibly escalate emotions, regardless of what policy positions they hold on these issues.”
Northam is backing eight bills, the same package he submitted ahead of the aborted special session in July. Among them are measures to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, bump stocks and silencers; require background checks on all firearms sales and transfers; cap handgun purchases at one per month; and create a “red flag law” to temporarily remove guns from people deemed a threat to themselves or others.
The proposed assault-weapons ban has been one of the most controversial measures, since the original bill bans not only the sale of those guns but possession — meaning people who already own them would have to give them up. Amid an uproar, Northam said a grandfather clause would be added to protect existing owners, but they would have to register their weapons. Gun-rights advocates were not appeased, saying registration is just a first step toward confiscation.
Response to that agenda has become so heated that the nation’s most visible gun-rights group, the National Rifle Association, is taking an intentionally lower-key approach. It will sponsor town halls in three rural locations around Virginia in the coming weeks, aimed at explaining proposed legislation.
Rather than publicize the Jan. 20 rally, the NRA has called on its members to visit lawmakers on Jan. 13, the day it expects the first bills to be taken up in committee. It has not commented on the sanctuary cities movement.
A group called United in Strength for America is sponsoring a two-day seminar at a hotel near Richmond’s airport for the weekend before the Jan. 20 rally. Its slate of speakers includes Tony Pellegrino, founder of a West Coast conservative law academy, who will describe legal methods for fighting gun seizure laws. A state representative from Idaho “will share a behind-the-scenes look at the gun-grabbers,” according to an email invitation to the event.
“The country is watching us, for Virginia is the canary in the coal mine of the nation,” the invitation says.
All the outside attention has overwhelmed some of the homegrown gun rights advocates. Troy Carter, who helped rally support for a sanctuary proclamation in Amelia County outside Richmond, said he has seen the fiery language on social media.
“I am worried people will come here to Virginia and look for that opportunity to cause trouble,” he said. “It’s not going to be the sanctuary guys, because we just want peace and to be left alone.”
The Post Recommends
FBI Arrests 3 Alleged Members Of White Supremacist Group Ahead Of Richmond Rally
Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET
The FBI has arrested three alleged members of The Base — which authorities describe as a "racially motivated violent extremist group" — on charges that range from illegal transport of a machine gun to harboring aliens, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Maryland.
A law enforcement official tells NPR that the three suspected members of The Base had discussed going to a controversial pro-gun rally in Virginia next week.
The three men are Brian Mark Lemley Jr., 33, of Elkton, Md.; William Garfield Bilbrough IV, 19, of Denton, Md.; and Canadian national Patrik Jordan Mathews, 27, who entered the U.S. illegally last summer. Mathews and Lemley had recently been living in Newark, Del.
The arrests come days before a pro-gun demonstration that's slated to take place in Richmond, Va., on Monday — and just after Gov. Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency and banned firearms on the Capitol grounds in Richmond in anticipation of the gun rights demonstration.
"We have received credible intelligence from our law enforcement agencies that there are groups with malicious plans for the rally that is planned for Monday," Northam said Wednesday afternoon.
The firearms ban was challenged in court, but a judge in Richmond upheld the governor's order.
The criminal case against Lemley, Bilbrough and Mathews was filed under seal Tuesday; it was unsealed Thursday after their arrests. The defendants were to appear before a federal judge Thursday afternoon at the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., just east of the Capital Beltway. They were not expected to enter any pleas in that initial appearance, the U.S. Attorney's Office says.
Two of the men who were arrested have previous military training: Lemley was a cavalry scout in the Army, and Mathews previously served as a combat engineer in the Canadian Army Reserve.
Mathews apparently entered the U.S. just days after a high-profile police raid on his house in rural Manitoba, Canada, last August. As the CBC reported, police ordered Mathews out of his house so they could execute a search warrant related to suspicions that he was acquiring guns and recruiting for The Base — which the CBC called "a global neo-Nazi terrorist group."
The FBI says Lemley and Bilbrough drove together from Maryland to Michigan to pick up Mathews after he illegally entered the U.S. near the Manitoba-Minnesota border. The trio then traveled to Maryland's Eastern Shore area, where Bilbrough lives, the bureau says.
Lemley and Mathews then set up a residence in neighboring Delaware, where authorities say they started working to build an illegal assault rifle and acquire ammunition, according to court documents.
"Lemley and Mathews used an upper receiver ordered by Lemley, as well as other firearms parts, to make a functioning assault rifle," the U.S. Attorney's Office says, citing an affidavit that FBI Special Agent Rachid Harrison filed in support of the charges.
This month, the U.S. Attorney's Office says, Lemley and Mathews "purchased approximately 1,650 rounds of 5.56mm and 6.5mm ammunition; traveled from Delaware to a gun range in Maryland, where they shot the assault rifle; and retrieved plate carriers (to support body armor) and at least some of the purchased ammunition from Lemley's prior residence in Maryland."
It appears federal authorities had the men under surveillance, as Harrison's affidavit details their movements and quotes from their conversations. One section of the FBI affidavit describes Lemley taking the assault rifle to a gun range in Maryland: "An FBI agent observed Lemley at the gun range, and heard what appeared to be more than one bullet being fired at a time."
The court documents state that when Lemley returned to the Delaware apartment he shared with Mathews, he said the rifle "would have to be cached though because that's an ATF f****** nightmare" and added, "Oh oops, it looks like I accidentally made a machine gun."
Lemley then said he would partially dismantle the gun in case agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives visited the apartment — to which Mathews replied, "Um, if they show up here, we got other problems."
When the two men returned to the same gun range in Maryland three days later, the FBI was ready. Its agents had set up a camera near the gun range, allowing them to record Lemley and Mathews with the illegal firearm.
The Base's members use encrypted chat rooms to discuss their supremacist agenda, the FBI says. According to court documents, the extremists frequently discuss topics such as "recruitment, creating a white ethno-state, committing acts of violence against minority communities (including African-Americans and Jewish-Americans), the organization's military-style training camps, and ways to make improvised explosive devices."
Summarizing the most serious charges in the case, the U.S. Attorney's Office says Lemley and Mathews could each face a maximum of 10 years in prison if they're convicted of "transporting a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony offense."
Lemley faces additional charges, from transporting a machine gun in interstate commerce to providing a gun and ammunition to an illegal alien. And Mathews could face a maximum of 10 years if he's convicted of being an alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition.
In addition to those charges, both Lemley and Bilbrough could face a maximum sentence of five years for allegedly transporting and harboring Mathews.
NPR's Hannah Allam and Ryan Lucas contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment