Overflow attendance at Amelia County board of supervisors meeting.
by James A. Bacon
According to gun-rights groups, 87 Virginia counties, 10 cities, and 18 towns have adopted Second Amendment Sanctuary resolutions. The magnitude of this grassroots movement is unprecedented in recent Virginia history. Nothing can compare, not even the Tea Party movement.
If you want to know what’s animating the gun-rights movement, though, you have to read conservative and right-wing websites and blogs. Virginia’s mainstream media is clueless. Virginia journalists working for the major media outlets, whose coverage reflects the preoccupations of urban liberals, didn’t see this coming. When the movement gained momentum, Virginia journalists were slow to catch on. And now that the movement has gained a full head of steam, Virginia journalists are getting scooped by out-of-state conservative publications.
Thus, we learn from the Washington Examiner — not the Washington Post, not the Richmond Times-Dispatch, not even the Roanoke Times — that Governor Ralph Northam has budgeted $4.8 million over two years to fund the creation of 18 positions to support proposed legislation “related to an assault weapons ban.” Gun rights advocates are interpreting this measure as hiring an 18-officer team to enforce an “assault weapons” ban, and they’re suggesting that Northam, despite promising to grandfather existing assault-weapons owners, may be planning to confiscate the weapons.
State law also requires any legislation that might increase the prison population over the succeeding six years to include a one-year General Fund appropriation to cover the estimated increase in prison operating costs. Another addition to the budget includes this text under the rubric of a projected increase “in the need for prison beds”:
There are five such bills proposed: allow the removal of firearms from persons who pose a substantial risk to themselves or others; prohibit the sale, possession, and transport of assault firearms, trigger activators, and silencers; increase the penalty for allowing a child to access unsecured firearms; prohibit possession of firearms for persons subject to final orders of protection; and require background checks for all firearms sales. The impact of these bills is estimated at $50,000 each.
(Give credit to mainstream media reporter Ben Paviour with Virginia Public Media for tweeting about this last item.)
I don’t know how much it costs to buy a prison bed — two thousand dollars? — but it’s not a stretch to conclude that the Northam administration is budgeting for more than a hundred extra prison beds for gun-related offenses — even as other bills propose to reduce Virginia’s prison population by decriminalizing marijuana, reducing youth incarceration, and reinstating parole.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League is portraying these budget items as signs of impending gun confiscations. “We need to get as many pro-gun Virginians as possible to attend these meetings and demand to know if the delegates and senators plan to allocate money — as delineated in budget — to confiscate common, household firearms from Virginia citizens,” VCDL wrote in an email alert.
It”s not clear how the VCDL extrapolates from the hiring of 18 officers “to support” gun legislation” to “gun confiscation.” Is there evidence to support such fears, or is this unsubstantiated alarmism? I don’t know. That’s why it is critical to have responsible reporting and fact checking by mainstream journalists on the Second Amendment Sanctuary issue. As I have blogged previously, the gun-rights movement is reliant upon social media for most of its information… and, as most of us can agree, social media is not the most dependable source of information, subject as it is to unfounded rumor and possibly even Russian trolling and web bots.
The dominant media can be counted on to report statements from Governor Northam, Attorney General Mark Herring, legislators and the anti-gun advocates, but reporters are way behind the curve on how the fast-moving Second Amendment Sanctuary movement is responding to gun-control initiatives. The Democratic Party takeover of the General Assembly is unquestionably the No. 1 political story of 2020. But the Second Amendment Sanctuary story is unquestionably the No. 2 political story, and the media coverage so far has been grossly inadequate.
Update: I have been reminded that The Virginia Mercury did outline the main contours of this story almost a month ago. You can read its coverage here.
And other media-related news… the Richmond Times-Dispatch has sold its four-story office building to Shamin Hotels, the region’s largest hotel operator, and will consolidate its advertising, news, and administrative offices on the fourth floor.
