Good morning:
By now, it has become clear that the gloves are off and the anti-gun establishment has openly stated that it intends to take guns and gun rights. President Obama’s spokespeople have stated that he is considering executive action when he gets back from vacation in January. This sounds kind of mysterious, but if you want to know what to expect, you need look no farther than what is going on in Virginia just outside the nation’s capital. I awoke this morning to learn that Virginia has moved to phase two of its anti-gun tyranny. In phase one Governor McAuliffe, whose campaign was heavily funded by anti-gun Bloomberg & Associates unilaterally issued an executive order dated October 15, 2015. That order, despite no agency findings or any other lawful process, declared that there was an “emergency” and that guns needed to be excluded from all state offices, agencies and property for all civilians, including concealed handgun permit (CHP) holders. This included every state office, including their state-run alcohol stores, Division of Motor Vehicles, everything everywhere statewide. That “emergency” executive order was then moved to the rule-making process so it could become permanent (found here if anyone wants to see for themselves). More than 2600 comments against have been recorded so far, but that’s actually not very many and those probably won’t make any actual difference. Similarly, it won’t make a difference that there have been zero shootings in Virginia state offices, that CHP holders are more law abiding than some police departments, or that making state offices and property “gun free” target zones is a spectacularly bad idea.
Last night, the Virginia Attorney General (who won in 2013 by 165 votes in a state of some 8.3 million) stated that he had performed an “audit” of other states issuing concealed handgun permits and declared that twenty-five states are too “lax”, therefore he is unilaterally ending reciprocity for those states (article here). This means that citizens there suddenly cannot carry in Virginia and Virginia citizens cannot carry there either. This is all happening, by the way, in a state where the state Constitution states quite clearly in Article I, Section 13: “That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed…”
The orchestrated actions above appear to be a test to see what happens when executive orders and attorney general actions are used to bypass the legislative branch and damage or destroy the rights of the people. Unless the actions are more heavily resisted in Virginia and any other states that are trying this authoritarian approach, we should expect this to be tried at the federal level very soon. As always, be prepared. – Kass Andrada