Washington capitol 2a rally
Jeff Hulbert for TTAG
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From the Second Amendment Organization . . .

NEITHER VIOLENCE NOR ADVOCACY THROUGH INTIMIDATION ARE CONDONED BY LEADERS IN THE GUN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

On the eve of a Presidential inauguration that will take place behind unprecedented security after our nation’s Capitol building was attacked by a small band of violent and destructive rioters, we feel it is important to make this clear.

Since the incursion that temporarily interrupted the certification of the Presidential election on January 6th, some journalists, media pundits, anti-gun activists and even a small number of elected officials have attempted to tie the gun rights movement to the reprehensible acts that lead to deaths that day and fear of further violence this week.

These claims are unfounded.

NO GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION OR RECOGNIZED LEADER CALLED FOR VIOLENCE ON JANUARY 6TH

Political Violence goes against the heart of the gun rights movement. The Second Amendment protects gun rights in order to provide for defense. The gun community has denounced violence tied to protests throughout 2020, as we also condemn the violence and destruction of property at the US Capitol in January 6th without equivocation.

As early as the afternoon of January 6th, the President of the Second Amendment Institute International, Tyler Yzaguirre, who lives in Washington, DC, posted publicly:

Today there was an illegal and unprecedented charge on the U.S. Capitol.

You have the right to “peacefully” protest. Not to put the lives of Members, police officers, and your fellow Americans in danger.

The Second Amendment Organization’s Executive Vice President, Rob Pincus, has vehemently denounced the violence and posted early during the gathering at the Capitol:

I’m sincerely hoping that this protest remains peacefully disruptive.

Alan Gottlieb, Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, stated that the small band becoming violent at the US Capitol “…disturbed me greatly.”

The list of gun rights movement leaders who have shared similar thoughts is extensive. There are an estimated 100 million gun owners in the United States with over 400 million civilian-owned firearms. Less than 1000 rioters entered the US Capitol and not one of them fired a single shot.

As David Yamane, a professor of sociology at Wake Forest who studies the gun culture, observed in his rebuke of a recent article in The Atlantic attacking our movement:

As easy as domestic terrorism is to commit, few gun owners turn to insurrectionist violence.

It should also be noted that there is only one political cause that unites all gun owners: gun rights. No action being undertaken that day at the Capitol was specifically related to gun rights.

The violent mob represented only a very small percentage of the people gathered in DC for political purposes that day. They were certainly not us.

Members of every political party and position are gun owners in the US. Organizations in our community represent gun owners of various faiths, lifestyles, races and interests. Every State has a gun rights organization representing its residents, most have several.

The Second Amendment protects the rights of all Americans, regardless of political party, vote or position on any issue… and we respect everyone’s right to hold differing opinions and express them peacefully. At this time of great division in our country, we call for unity amongst all gun owners in the fight to protect our gun rights in the future, regardless of who you voted for or how you feel about the 2020 Election.

A crowd of thousands of US gun owners gathered on the west lawn of the US Capitol just 14 months ago to peacefully rally in defense of gun rights. (image courtesy 2AO.org)

A statement this week from the 2A Rally group, which held a peaceful four-hour event at the US Capitol in 2019 by working with the US Capitol Police special events division, included the following:

Responsible Gun Owners know that violence is an act of last resort, not to be engaged in out of anger or frustration.

All Gun Owners should consider how their actions might negatively affect our movement. Anyone who feels compelled to protest over the course of the next week should take advantage of their First Amendment rights lawfully and respectfully. We believe that peaceful protest should be focused on demonstrating strong support for a cause and educational advocacy, not intimidation, towards those one hopes to influence.

We agree fully.

 

This article was originally published at 2ao.org and is reprinted here with permission. 

 

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68 COMMENTS

  1. A few things:

    “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
    -John F. Kennedy

    “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
    -George Orwell

    “Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the Gun down.”

    -Malcom X

    • Precisely. Heck I’m a peaceful old man – until there’s a reason not to be. And the left has been disturbing my calm for quite a long time.

        • If democRats could say without any doubt being Pro Second Amendment is rooted in racism and genocide they’d beat the Party of Lincoln to death with it and burn the corpse.

          On the other hand The Party of Lincoln can say without any doubt whatsoever that Gun Control is indeed Rooted in centuries of democRat Party racism. And what does the Party of Lincoln say or do to the democRat Party? Absolutely Nothing NADA…
          And morons wonder how democRats can get away with concocted slander, libel and wind up in the White House.

      • It ain’t just the left. It’s the whole apparatus. The left wing and the right wing are two wings on the same mentally defective bird.

        • “It’s the whole apparatus.” EXACTLY. At the very least, it seems to be (past) time for voters to consider alternative candidates and parties (e.g., Libertarian Party) as the Democrats and Republicans have become increasingly (and absurdly) polarized, feckless, and downright petty in recent years.

        • As far as the romney/mcconnell wing of the Republican Party you are correct. There are some who are worth saving. The thing to do is keep the party and drain the swamp as much as possible and overwhelm what’s left with numbers. The clock starts now.

        • “It ain’t just the left. It’s the whole apparatus. The left wing and the right wing are two wings on the same mentally defective bird.”

          No.

          That’s the defective ‘logic’ Leftist scum use when they say things like “America is hopelessly broken, fundamentally racist and cannot be ‘fixed’.”

          There is a good side and and an evil side and the evil side is hell-bent on destroying this great nation…

        • I tend to agree, except that they are morally bankrupt, not mentally defective. I’ve seen this coming since 1992 as a Sophmore in HS. Granted, they pushed up the timeline by 25 years or so, but this was always the plan. Both sides have been lied to by the uniparty pols, while they made deals in smoke filled back rooms to sell America off piece by piece. We have become the equivalent of the wife and the mistress fighting each other, when the husband betrayed them both. We are at that pivotal point right before the big knock down drag out between the wife and the mistress, which inevitably ends with them realizing that they have both played, join forces, and turn their combined furry on the husband. Its important to understand that the fight must take place, the reconciliation will be powerful, and the husband will be doomed. It does not matter who is the wife and who is the mistress, in the end it is all about the betrayal. Biden’s administration is the drunken text in the middle of the night meant for the mistress, but sent to the wife. Carry love in your heart, peace in your soul, and a pistol just in case.

    • Meanwhile the “Sleepy Joe” team hired their own security. 25,000 guard troops….nah…Secret Service…nah…

      What Joe needs is the Pretorian Guard. Seems we have us a Caesar. Et Tu Brute comes to mind. As Rome fell so shall the US. We have already had the Circuses, now they want to control the bread.

      Cut the Pipeline, no longer energy independent, Putin sells to EU. Taiwan falls to China. Who stops them?

      “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” Joe is weak.

        • That’s OK. China’s slave labor force will take up the slack of the murdered and imprisoned Taiwanese. Biden will be quietly shitting in his diaper in the Oval Office during all of it.

      • If I was Russia or China, I’d plan a joint surprise offensive tomorrow right as the inauguration kicked off. Russia could take the Baltic states in 12 hours and China could have Taiwan in a day or two if they’ve been prepping.

        By the time Biden and the Democrats get their bearings straight, it would be over and the global power balance permanently altered in their favor.

        • But who would Rooskia sale it’s arms too? It’s gotta be good guy bad guy or nobody makes any money.( Like that matters anymore)
          Scrap irons no good, but the blood markets up. More Americans need to donate to the Red Cross Blood Gimme, MAGA no sht.

        • “But who would Rooskia sale it’s arms too?”

          *Plenty* of tin-pot dictators and war lords in the developing world to take up the slack…

  2. Hmmm….violence seemed to work fine for ANTIFA and BLM.
    I think I saw that BLM has received millions in corporate donations.

    • Yep, a little re-branding, a digital campaign, and what’s good for the goose can be good for the gander, it seems to me… 😉

    • Are you propositioning me?

      I feel like this is one of those spam emails…. because there’s no way you could actually know who I voted for.

      Now, you could look at who I actively campaigned for…. but: you’ll come up empty and certainly not find anything to show I supported Biden.

      Trump was an embarrassment and I’m very glad to see him go. I’m not happy to see any anti-gun President come in. So, I was gonna be mad either way. 😆.

      You will find that I was actively campaigning for the Republican Senate Candidates in GA last month though. How much time did you spend knocking on doors to defend the Republican Control of the Senate?

      • Geez Pincus way to dig your own grave. For many reasons DJT was the best President in history. Peace in the middle east,sanctity for human life,moving our Embassy to Jerusalem, stopping China,and(a biggie)developing a China flu vacine in warp speed. There’s a lot more but since I’m not a 2A “name” I’m sure you don’t care…I’ll be sure to give you a shoutout on fakebook😏

  6. LIES! You’ve used words and, as we all know after a few years of instruction on the topic words are violence!

    /s

    It’s always amused me that they never actually state which words are violence, so apparently it’s all words. That being the case I will now cease typing out my violent screed. Lulz.

    • Aha, but the violence is not a matter of which words, but whose.

      Unfortunately, by pointing that out, I have now marked myself as the wrong subset of who (or if we’re being grammatically correct, which is also probably violence, whom), and having committed violence, must now silence myself.

      • Damn right. Let us sit silently and therefore peacefully and exchange no ideas.

        If it saves one feeling and all…

        On a serious note however, they never actually made the distinction between speaker and speech and attributed the violence to the speech itself. Interestingly though, the violent character of essentially identical speech varied based on who said the same things too. Therefore the logical conclusion is that there’s something intrinsic about the speech itself that is violent but and only sometimes detectable.

        Now, if you went to the appropriate schools and got just the right Intersectionality Degree, with a double minor in LGBTQ and Critical Race Theory studies, you would know that this isn’t strange at all but actually very similar to the behavior of light as both a particle and a wave. Of course, since we’re dealing the The Party of Science here, we’re just going to have to assume that the Schrödingeresque nature of violence in speech is something us science deniers simply can’t comprehend because we lack both the intelligence and the requisite education. Therefore it’s best to leave it in the hands of the experienced and educated elite, you know, our betters.

        [Odd side note, my spell check keeps trying to change “betters” to “grifters”. Weird huh? Fortunately, I disabled that bigotry for the children.]

  7. Insurrection…without guns. I believe there are MILLIONS of US who may cross that line. I wish I wasn’t old and getting older. Had a Covid test today. I’ll know on Friday. Lost my sense of smell/taste yesterday. The dims are overplaying their BS “victory”…

    • Dang, that’s not a good sign — the lost sense of taste/smell, I mean. But the Dems overplaying their hand isn’t good news, either. Either/or, both/and. But even if you do gots the ‘VID, the odds are in your favor (it’s not the Black Death, after all). May you get well quickly if that’s the case, and live long and prosper in any case.

      Oh, hey…but if by some unlucky chance you *do* happen to die of COVID, do us all a favor and let us know so we don’t have to wonder where you went? (Oh, wait…) 😀

    • FWW – suggest vit D and zink. Had those symptoms last March. Weirdest flu ever. Suggest looking up the symptoms for hypoxia – I’m a private pilot in Colorado and hypoxia is at the top of the list. Symptoms include mental confusion and toes turning blue. Peace.

      • And euphoria, so you feel *wonderful* as you graveyard spiral in…

    • Without totally nerding out about biology I’ll simply say that you might be happy to know that a loss of smell and/or taste early in a Covid case is correlated rather strongly with milder cases and that, often, it’s the only symptom people ever experience.

      • Thanks for the “advice” and well wishes. No wondering where I’ll go if I leave this mortal coil. I’ll be with JESUS! The author & finisher of our faith. It just so happens I “may” have caught the wuhan at Point Blank Range. No masks as it was kinda crowded and I was teaching my wife & a couple some gun shooting basics. My wife is a regular Annie Oakley😏

        • Indoor ranges are a place that I have long worn an actual respirator because of the lead dust in the air.

          The Miller LPR-100 is my personal recommendation since it doesn’t get in the way of ear/eye pro. Used one as a welder when I did SMAW and it works well for this application too.

    • I had my second COVID test on the weekend after new year. First was done back in June.

      Went to the local hospital. After some waiting they stuck the swap to the back of my throat until you start to gag and then so far up each nostril your sneeze reflex starts. Signed up for immediate SMS results while waiting. Between driving in an out of the car park and walking to the clinic, it was less than an hour.

      At 3pm I was heading home to self quarantine until the results arrived. At 130am I had the first results and by 8am I had the second results. Both negative.

  8. But then there are all of those posts about the Tree of Liberty, cold dead hands, lock and load and and and that populate comments sections of many blogs such as this one. There is an undeniable repository of anger as the socialists seek to undermine our democratic traditions and the entire conservative right that will only increase as the deplatforming continues. The Democratic Party urge to purge may have unfortunate consequences, as the incident at the Capitol demonstrates .I sincerely hope this pent up pressure does not result in violence, but one has to wonder if the boiling point will be reached.

    • Boiling point will be reached soon, once the Dems launch their new Domestic War on Terror. That means they will be coming after 74 million Americans to reprogram, reeducate, or just plain eliminate. They haven’t been shy about announcing exactly what they intend. Take them seriously, because they are deadly serious.

    • “but one has to wonder if the boiling point will be reached.”

      1 – Kill the filibuster and enact ‘gun control’.

      2 – PR statehood, diluting the senate conservative balance.

      3 – This is the one that will do it – Stack the SCOTUS…

  9. “We value truth over facts.”

    Once the accusations are made, there is no defense. Defense simply proves the accusation was correct, else you wouldn’t need a defense.

    • As was said recently “Trumpers are pushing back so hard against this video because so many of them live in the dark, cloaked behind normal jobs and seemingly normal lives…”

      See, you’re exactly right. It’s not the rampant paranoia of the Left, nor their calls for violence that has “Trumpers… pushing back”. It’s the fact that the “Trumpers” are, in fact, guilty and their denial of guilt proves it.

      There’s times I hope this all goes sideways because if it does then Biggie was right when he said “retaliation for this one won’t be minimal”.

  11. “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

    — H. L. Mencken

    If the gun rights movement is truly committed to nonviolence, it won’t be around for very much longer.

  14. There are differences among the various groups.

    Proud Bois are violent as are various White Supremacist outfits and their fellow travelers. They carry guns, and are enemies of the Republic.

    Gun Rights protestors carry guns and are not violent. They do not seek to break laws, they do seek to avoid violence. All they want is their Constitutional Rights to stop being infringed upon.

    Problem is telling the groups apart. Also, sometimes, they do overlap.

    But yeah, from the VCDL Gun Rights Folks, good behavior is exactly what was to be expected, as always.

  15. OMG THA COMMENTS , CONS AND PROS ..

    GOD BLESS AMERICA AND OUR CONSTITUTION .

    YEP WANT A , CHANGE SOMETHING POLITICAL , PLEASE GET ONE WAY TICKET TO NORTH KOREA , PLEASE DON’T FORGET TAKE tRUMP WITH YA .
    KIM JONG UN WECOME YA WITH OPEN ARMS .
    SEE WHAT GUN RIGHTS YOU HAVE AND VOTING RIGHTS . ???
    FREEDOM OF SPEECH WITH OLD MR. K J UN . . ???

  16. Thank you all for your comments. Your IP has been loggedand your device’s drive copied. One of our agents will be by shortly to discuss your re-education options.

    These ass clowns are going to overplay their hand. I wonder how long until the Republican party is banned by defacto.

    I don’t ever in my life want to hear any whiney, mealy mouth, soy boys crying about people having a voice. I am tempted to blast Eminem’s Criminal NFSW
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mR8_ldc9lag just to give the SJW crew an aneurysm. It would be funny to watch them eat their own.

    On another note who is up for starting a pirate radio station in Gulf of Mexico. We can read Trump tweets all day long. Radio Free Trump. All Trump All The Time.

    I need some sleep.

    • “I wonder how long until the Republican party is banned by defacto.”

      Rather think it will ban itself, like the Whig party it replaced.

      • I’d guess it’s more at risk of just plain fragmenting. The post-Trump R’s need to figure things out soon.

  17. Another non-violent, responsible gun owner receiving an all expenses paid vacation to Club Fed:

    “The Justice Department has filed its first conspiracy charges from the Capitol riot against a Virginia man who they allege was an apparent leader of a group of militia members who were part of the mob that stormed the building.

    Thomas Edward Caldwell is identified in an FBI affidavit as a member of the Oath Keepers. An agent alleges that he helped organize a group of eight to 10 of his fellow members to storm the Capitol with the intention of disrupting the counting of the Electoral College vote.

    The group can be seen in video walking uniformly through a crowd of rioters trying to gain entrance to the Capitol.

    Those members included co-conspirators Jessica Watkins and Donovan Crowl, who were charged for their role in the riots earlier this week. In social media posts, both Crowl and Watkins referred to Caldwell as “Commander,” according to the court documents.

    While inside the Capitol, Caldwell allegedly received Facebook messages telling him to “seal” in lawmakers in the tunnels under the Capitol and to “turn on gas.” Other messages appeared to be trying to give him updates on the locations of lawmakers, the affidavit states.

    Other texts reveal the extensive planning and even potential attacks that he and other members of the Oath Keepers were mounting leading up to the riots.

    On Jan. 1, Caldwell allegedly messaged an individual recommending a room at the Comfort Inn Ballston in Arlington, Virginia, saying, “This is a good location and would allow us to hunt at night if we wanted to.”

    After the riot, Caldwell allegedly posted a Facebook message stating, “Us storming the castle. Please share. Sharon was right with me! I am such an instigator!” the affidavit states. He later wrote, “We need to do this at the local level. Lets storm the capitol in Ohio. Tell me when!”

    • Assuming all of this is true, and that some groups were planning an “invasion” of the Capitol long before January 6, kinda puts the lie to the contention that Trump’s speech had anything to do with instigating it.

  19. To all gun owners, veterans, and Law enforcement fly all of your flags upside down and half mast…I persecution is coming for us…And most likely you will have no choice but to be violent…God bless!

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