Ralph Northam, Virginia’s Democratic governor, declared a public emergency despite knowing there were no grounds for doing so. The governor, who recently overcame his history of racism to hang on to his current elected office, did this in his typically cynical fashion. He invoked the 2017 Charlottesville rally organized by neo-Nazis and suggested that a gathering by law-abiding gun owners in opposition to his gun control proposals would turn out similarly.
In asserting that militia and hate groups had threatened violent acts at the rally, Northam was deliberately stoking irrational fears about what would happen Monday when gun owners converged on Richmond to protest his anti-Second Amendment agenda. When nothing bad happened at the rally, of course, Northam even had the gall to pat himself on the back for it. Such are the delusions of a man whose main goal at this point is to build a legacy comprising something other than the racist costumes on his yearbook page and the racist nickname he went by during the 1980s when he was already a full-grown adult.
Northam thinks he can change the subject by denigrating and antagonizing gun owners. After all, there is no public safety purpose to most of his gun proposals, which Monday’s rally was staged to oppose. For example, why are they trying to limit the number of outdoor gun ranges in the state? Does someone think that criminals are using them to become too accurate?
Why exactly are Virginia Democrats trying to bring back an unconstitutional “one-gun-a-month” purchase limit? And why did Northam’s Democratic minions in the state legislature, even as they advanced proven-ineffective gun control proposals, vote against a measure imposing additional penalties on those using guns to commit crimes? The unflattering truth is that Virginia Democrats want to be soft on violent criminals but, at the same time, signal their virtue by going hard on law-abiding gun owners.
What is being missed here is that Virginia is and has been a nice and relatively safe place to live and also a prime example of a state where gun rights are respected. Its desirability has even attracted enough wealthy liberals to Northern Virginia to change its politics. Somehow, gun-friendly Virginia, where open carry is commonplace and concealed carry permits are “shall-issue,” has not only failed to become Dodge City but, in fact, became one of the lowest-crime states in America as both violent and property crime in its cities declined during a period of statewide gun liberalization.
The fact that California, Illinois, and Texas have comparable rates of gun crime year-over-year, despite operating under radically different gun laws, should serve as the tipoff to a broader statistical reality. State gun control policies and rates of gun ownership do not correlate statistically with levels of state gun homicides or other gun crimes. If you want to understand why Maryland has so many more shootings per capita than Idaho, or Alaska than Massachusetts, you need to look beyond gun policy.
And that stands to reason because there is no way to tie the policies that Virginia Democrats are trying to enact to the prevention of gun crimes such as the ones Northam is constantly trying to exploit with his insincere rhetoric.
Northam desperately wants to build a legacy for himself that doesn’t involve his poor personal decisions about dressing up like a Klansman or wearing blackface. To that end, he is attempting to impose an ideologically predetermined solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Virginia voters should protect their rights while they still have them, and gun owners in other states should take note of what happens when they let Democrats win elections.
