NationalReview | Ralph Northam
is about to make the biggest tactical mistake in Virginia since
Cornwallis decided to park his army at Yorktown. With his attempt to
force local commonwealth’s attorneys and sheriffs in Second Amendment
sanctuaries to enforce his unconstitutional gun laws, Governor Northam
is setting himself up for a catastrophic failure. In fact, there’s no
way for Northam to win the fight he seems intent on picking with
Virginia gun owners and Second Amendment sanctuaries.
The governor isn’t being helped by fellow Democrats such as U.S.
congressman Donald McEachin, who said the governor should call out the
National Guard to enforce the law, or Attorney General Mark Herring, who
blithely says he expects that the laws will be followed once they’re on
the books.
There are also Democrats, such as Delegate David Toscano, who have
been comparing the Second Amendment–sanctuary movement to the Massive
Resistance movement that unfolded in Virginia in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education
decision in 1954. Massive Resistance came about after Democratic
governor Thomas B. Stanley organized a state-level opposition movement
to the integration of public schools in Virginia in the late 1950s. To
compare it to today’s Second Amendment–sanctuary movement is to compare
apples and oranges on a couple of different levels.
First of all, the Second Amendment–sanctuary movement is morally
just, unlike the Massive Resistance movement of the late ’50s and early
’60s. The Second Amendment–sanctuary movement isn’t about curtailing
rights, but rather about protecting their free exercise.
