According to Firearm Chronicles
The fight to preserve gun rights in Virginia has now moved to the commonwealth’s town squares as gun owners in the Old Dominion now face localized gun control.
What was once a fight only at the statehouse level, has moved potentially to every one of Virginia’s cities, towns, and counties now that localities have been given permission to enact their own gun bans.
Yesterday, in the first event of its kind in Virginia, 300 to 400 gun rights supporters crowded into the plaza outside of Northern Virginia’s Alexandria City Municipal Center to protest a planned vote by the town council there to ban firearms in their city parks, municipal center and plazas next week.
The protest was organized by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group that famously turned out more than 25,000 gun rights supporters at the Richmond statehouse last January.
Although the turnout in Alexandria today was not considered overwhelming, VCDL organizers noted they only had about 48 hours of lead time to turn out gun owners.
The Alexandria council vote for this first-in-the-state local gun ban is set for Saturday, June 20, with the Virginia Citizens Defense League now organizing the turnout for the council session—a place where armed citizens have taken seats in the past with holstered handguns, and even long guns.
Gun rights supporters acknowledge an uphill battle against the decidedly left-leaning city of Alexandria, a picturesque and historic place where one can see the skyline of Washington, DC’s monuments from the shore of the Potomac River that borders Alexandria on the east side.