Some 100,000 Virginia gun owners who have rallied at county and town meetings for “gun sanctuaries” on Thursday began “bombarding” state Democratic lawmakers eager to use their new majority in Richmond to push through new restrictions and bans.
“Now it’s time. Now we’re going to melt down their phones, explode their inboxes on their email. We’re going to bombard them more than they’ve been bombarded,” said Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, which is leading the gun sanctuary movement.
On Thursday, he issued an “alert” to supporters to start lobbying lawmakers in Richmond against gun control. He said that the new anti-gun laws from Democrats are “pouring in like a waterfall.”
Later this month, his group is also organizing its annual “lobbying day” that is expected to draw dozens of buses full of supporters from around Virginia as well as from 13 states as far away as Texas, Florida, and Connecticut.
Latest map with 124 sanctuaries. I never realized how much I like green! So do the red and blue areas underneath ? pic.twitter.com/wnOQ3KaG5S
— Phil Van Cleave VCDL (@VCDL_ORG) January 8, 2020
“They picked a fight with a set of people who are tired of it. We’re tired of being the whipping boy. Every time somebody shoots up a bunch of people in a gun-free zone, they come after us, and we’re tired of it. We’re fed up, and we’re not giving up any more. We’re not the problem,” he told Secrets.
Van Cleave’s group and another organization, Gun Owners of America, have helped to spark a pro-gun movement in Virginia that did not exist before Democrats swept the November 2019 elections.
In the two months since, they led the sanctuary movement that has won approval in 94% of the state. He estimated that over 100,000 gun supporters have flooded into those county and state meetings held to debate gun control and sanctuaries.
And now, he expects those and more to respond to his alert and target pro-gun control lawmakers. “We want their phones to melt down,” said the alert, adding, “Let’s roll!”
Van Cleave told Secrets that the movement in Virginia grew fast in part because the state had been one of the most pro-gun and those who took that for granted were rocked awake by the new bid to impose gun controls, including bans on modern sporting rifles and a universal background check.
“It was different when it hit Virginia,” he said. “Virginia had been a very free state for a long time. This is where freedom started, and it’s ironic that this is coming here, and I think that’s another reason that people are looking at Virginia, saying our freedom started here and … we’ll be damned if it ends here,” he added.
