A Call to Arms
At the dawn of a new legislative session, the Virginia Crime Commission met to consider its recommendations on a large number of bills affecting public safety. Of course, as always, this included a large number of bills regarding guns. And of course, as always, there were a number of absolutely ludicrous ideas. Fortunately the Commission shot down a bill that would have required a background check for all private sales.
However, the commission DID give its seal of approval to language that would assess a fee on gun show organizers for the cost of State Troopers to be at gun shows. This is the dream of anti-gun forces everywhere: to regulate private gun sales out of business, first by focusing on gun shows. I would wager that most of the people who come up with these ideas have never visited a gun show, and are not familiar with the fact that a) all federally licensed firearms dealers are required to run a background check for EVERY sale, even at gun shows and b) gun show organizers are extremely careful and aware of the risks that such an event carries. And trust me: the ATF is VERY good at finding people who are unlawfully involved in bulk firearm sales.
The goal here is to regulate private gun ownership our of existence in bits and pieces. By using scare tactics surrounding violent incidents (and don’t think for a second that this has nothing to do with the Tech tragedies), anti-gun activists know that they can get the public support to implement their piece-mill strategy to take guns out of private citizens hands, regardless of their needs for personal security and with no respect for the fundamental balance of power that underpins our American democracy.
So just who recommended this atrocious language? Why, Ken Stolle…..a REPUBLICAN state senator from Virginia Beach.
Thanks, Senator. Guess where we know your allegiances lie.
