Waynesboro doesn’t cave to Second Amendment zealots

Waynesboro City Council is standing as a voice of reason against the Second Amendment sanctuary nonsense movement.

The City Council declined Monday night to take up a resolution declaring Waynesboro a Second Amendment sanctuary, resisting the push of a Northern Virginia guns-for-all group that has been flaming up rural counties, cities and towns in the Commonwealth in a thinly-disguised effort at gemming up Republican votes ahead of the November presidential election.

The sanctuary resolutions passed elsewhere have the legal effect of a wet fart in church, but that hasn’t stopped local politicians across the Old Dominion from stepping on their private parts on the way to casting their lots with the faux-angry mobs.

You wouldn’t have faulted Waynesboro leaders from falling in line. Well, you would have, but you would have also understood.

There are elections coming up in a few months, among other things.

City leaders, though, didn’t fall for the orchestrated effort to make it appear that there is widespread support for flouting state law in the name of rustling up votes for the impeached Donald Trump.

A recent VCU poll of Virginia voters has support for an assault-weapons ban at 57 percent, which is significant in the context of something else that happened yesterday, in Richmond.

Legislation that would enact an assault-weapons ban, the feared SB 16, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, was withdrawn from consideration on Monday, by, drum roll, yes, Saslaw.

SB 16 was the bill that the guns-for-all folks had targeted as being the first step in mass confiscation, demonstrating the issues with our education system, which apparently doesn’t do any kind of decent job in teaching reading-comprehension skills to our kids.

Of course the bill wouldn’t have led to any kind of confiscations, but anyway, Saslaw withdrew the bill, as legislators pushing gun reforms are putting their focus on legislation setting out requirements of background checks for gun sales, allow law enforcement to temporarily remove guns from people deemed a risk to themselves or others, allow localities to ban weapons from certain events and government buildings, and cap handgun purchases at one per month.

Which is to say, you could say that the outcry from the hinterlands has worked, to some extent.

To wit: a Washington Post article on the busy Monday in Richmond tells us that Democrats are working up new legislation that would outlaw the sale of assault weapons, but leaving out the controversial provision also making it illegal to possess assault weapons.

Basically, you said you didn’t like the language in that bill, OK, we’ll go back to the drawing board, to see if we can find something we can all agree on.

This would seem to strip away any basis from the guns-for-all folks that the intent on the part of Democrats is to take away your guns, but from what we saw Monday night in a middle-school auditorium in Waynesboro, nah.

It was never about the actual legislation proposed; it’s entirely about November, and Trump.

Vice Mayor Bobby Henderson cited the actions in Richmond from earlier in the day to the mob last night, to no avail. Things got so bad that Henderson and Mayor Terry Short couldn’t get a complete sentence out, which, that’s what you get for even trying to appease a mob.

Three hours of shouting and gnashing of teeth later, the City Council stood firm.

Now, let’s just say it, this isn’t over. Not only is there the big election in November, but there are also City Council elections coming up in May, with three of the five seats, including the at-large seat held by Short, up for grabs.

It would be a shock if the guns-for-all crowd didn’t try to whip up a couple of candidates to run, the idea being to conduct a sort of litmus test for November.

You can expect to see something similar a few miles west over in Staunton, which is proving similarly resistant to the Second Amendment sanctuary nonsense.

Which is to say, awesome. More of this nonsense, into the spring, at the least.

Note to Short, Henderson, the rest of the City Council: we got your back.

Story by Chris Graham