Preventing Virginia Lobby Day Violence: Be Well Regulated

None of us has a crystal ball and predicting what is likely to occur in the future is always a crapshoot. When the smoke clears, the lucky ones who got it right can lay claim to “I told you so” prescience. The ones who missed the mark will end up looking like doomsday preachers with bewildered flocks gathered on the hilltop wondering why the skies failed to part and whisk them to their reward. At most, we can assess probabilities, and even those presuppose that’s not being done through the lens of confirmation bias, and that the data being evaluated is reasonably reliant and complete. Those familiar with computer science will recognize the venerable acronym and truism from the 1960s, “GIGO”: Garbage in, garbage out.”

So, what’s going to happen on Monday, January 20, “Lobby Day” at the Virginia State Capitol, when gun owner rights advocates will converge to express their fears, frustrations and concerns to legislators, many of whom are in the throes of the eye-rolling, anti-gun feeding frenzy the new Democrat majority is indulging in? And the question on everyone’s mind: Will it turn into, as some are warning, a “flash point” for a new “shot heard ‘round the world”?

If it does, here’s one prediction you can take to the bank: Those shots will not be initiated by anyone who is there to support the purpose of the day, that is, to lobby. Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) has been conducting such lobby days for years, and that’s never been a problem for “our side.” (By way of full disclosure, in 2015, I was an invited speaker for the event.)

Hindsight being 20/20, it was also predictable that those deciding to attend the event for the first time would demand to repurpose it, and to attack the longtime organizers for their request to leave the long guns at home. It’s not, as some hotheads who have never put a shoulder to the wheel charge, of the organizers being “pussies.”

“Monday, January 20, is Virginia Citizens Defense League’s Lobby Day. It is not VCDL’s Protest Day,” VCDL explains. “There is a distinct difference between the two.”

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