Safety Wins When Citizens Are Armed

This morning's Virginian-Pilot Editorial Board again got it all wrong in their editorial piece, no pun intended, about gun rights.  The editorial was clearly biased and not written by anyone who was at the time of the writing thinking clearly.  They were dead wrong and dead off center and, if we follow their line of thinking, we could end up dead in the ground.



When it comes to race, social injustice, education, the war in Iraq, or any topic the editors support, they understand the concept of demonstration.  Peaceful demonstration is a foundation of American justice and the sign of a healthy republic.  We, the people, need to get our leaders to understand our point.  That is what was going on at City Hall in Norfolk when VCDL members showed up openly, legally armed to state to council their views.  Each person carrying a gun that day was the poster child for law-abiding citizen.  They presented no threat to council nor to anyone else.  On the contrary, City Hall Chambers during that meeting was probably one of the safest places to be in all Hampton Roads.



The editorial board had it wrong when it they wrote, "Luckily for the VCDL, those same members get to go home when they're done making trouble in Norfolk."  I am a long-time member of VCDL, a resident of Norfolk, and I am pleased as dry powder that VCDL is vigilant regarding our gun rights in Virginia.  Their mailing address (which was the minimal research Virginian-Pilot editors seem to have accomplished) is in Northern Virginia.  Every organization, person, business, or other legal entity has an address where it conducts business.  But VCDL members live throughout Virginia, with a good number of VCDL members Norfolk citizens.  So, when we "go home," as the editorial said, we are in Norfolk. The editorial board's implication that VCDL has no right to come from Northern Virginia is hugely ingenuous, since the editors don't seem to mind when out of towners come in for any other type demonstration, i.e., peace demonstations, and editorials have, in fact, been highly supportive of such demonstrations with both "outsiders"and residents participating, just as was the case with the VCDL members in Norfolk.  So why the puckered panties with VCDL?  Answer:  Biased thinking.



Another fallacy in the editorial thinking, if I may use the word "thinking" loosely in this context, is the belief that a right is something that needs control and that the police need not be aware of state law when it comes to guns owned by private citizens.  That is a chilling, dangerous platform for an editorial board to support.  One does not control a right in the sense implied by the Virginian-Pilot's Editorial Board.  Officials do not get to decide when or how a right is exercised, unilaterally, as a couple Norfolk Police Officers attempted to do, repeatedly.



What the Editorial Board should have written about, had they actually been thinking of the issue, is the fact that a legally armed black man was repeatedly harassed for exercising, peacefully exercising, his inherent right.  That is the travesty here, that an officer of the law picks an armed, remember, a legally armed, black man out of a large crowd of legally armed people, the rest being of the white persuasion, and they harass that one individual who is doing nothing different from the group other than being black.  There goes the "rationale" of the entire editorial.



Virginian-Pilot Editorial writers are openly and objectionably biased in their thinking on this issue.  The mere thought of a citizen carrying a gun frightens them to the extent they lose their normally unbiased views on issues and go off the deep end.  I expect better from my local newspaper, I expect much better from supposed, self-described professional journalists.