As a redneck it should come as no surprise that I am 100% for gun rights and therefore put my full support behind what went down in Virginia in the past few days.
I was quite surprised that there wasn't any sort of false-flag operation on the part of the media to try to make gun-owners look like a bunch of out of control jerks with guns.
I don't expect everyone in the world to relate to how my community feels about guns but i think the rally itself can kind of show people how the presence of guns does not necessarily mean that there is going to be violence. Literally everyone I interact with in my day-to-day life carries guns with them everywhere they go and none of them have ever done anything stupid with them. They are completely prepared to handle any sort of dangerous situation without the need to wait the 10-20 minutes that it would take the Sherrif's department to respond to a frantic 9-1-1 call though.
The events in Richmond, I didn't attend them. I have to go to work just like most of the other people I know in my community and while we cheered them on in spirit, it wasn't so meaningful to me because it isn't my state after all.
Virginia is a funny state though, because almost all of it is the same as most of North Carolina... and by that I mean conservative. But it is a little different situation up there because the metropolitan areas of Washington D.C. constitute a large portion of the population of the state of Virginia. It is no secret that large urban areas tend to be liberal anywhere outside of Texas and this is the case in Virginia.
If you look at the above image you will see what I am talking about. With a few exceptions of course, the urban areas of Richmond, Norfolk, and Arlington (which is basically Washington D.C) are all liberal, while the rest of the state is pretty staunchly conservative. I have been to visit friends in these country areas and I can assure you, they are 2nd Amendment loving individuals by and large in those areas.
Yet, the state elects Democrat representatives because the areas with larger populations get more representatives based on their larger number of people. This makes sense to a certain degree because if you have more people in your district you should get more representation in law-making.
That being said, I really think that the Governor of Virginia made a terrible mistake by daring to go after gun laws. Even liberal members of the state of Virginia tend to be pro 2nd Amendment, they just feel Democrat on a number of other issues like climate-change, military spending, and social-services. However, if an official tries to go after their guns (and I am over-generalizing here) the people of Virginia, in my opinion, will not tolerate that.
If I was a betting man I would venture to guess that Governor Ralph Northam may have actually done something terribly damaging to his party not just in Virginia, but to the state's presidential decision-making also.
Virginia is one of those "swing-states" that you may have heard of in that it is not a foregone conclusion who they are going to vote for in Presidential elections such as California (always votes D) or Kansas (always votes R.) They sometimes vote Democrat, sometimes vote Republican. Northam may have not only secured a dramatic change in the leadership of Virginia by attempting to impose his will on the state in regards to gun ownership, but he may have inadvertently affected the 2020 Presidential election as well.
I can guarantee that Trump is going to take advantage of this. It will be exciting for this particular redneck to see what happens next!