Virginia Capitol come and take it flag
Courtesy Jeff Hulbert

The fact that most proposed gun bans target only the law-abiding while ignoring violent criminals isn’t lost on most gun-rights supporters. Interestingly, a proposed ban under consideration in the Virginia State Assembly actually targets the most law-abiding of law-abiding citizens.

Senate Bill 57, authored by Sen. Saddam Salim, makes it illegal for a concealed handgun permit holder to carry a concealed handgun onto the premises of any restaurant or club that sells alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption, whether the permit holder drinks any alcohol or not. What Sen. Salim might not realize—or perhaps he just doesn’t care about—is that Virginia’s 680,000 permit holders, as well as hundreds of thousands of non-resident permit holders visiting Virginia, have been peacefully carrying concealed handguns in restaurants and clubs that serve alcohol since 2010.

The slap in the face to lawful permit holders is amplified when you consider that recent figures from the Virginia State Police show that the revocation of carry permits for any reason is an miniscule one-tenth of 1%! That makes the people targeted by this law quite likely the most law-abiding subsection of Virginia citizenry!

And that doesn’t sit well with gun-rights advocates, including Philip Van Cleave, head of the Virginia Citizens Defense League.

“One-tenth of 1%: You can’t beat that for law-abiding,” Van Cleave said in an exclusive interview with TTAG. “And yet, they don’t want us to carry in restaurants.

“And they want to make it harder to get a permit. They want you to be fingerprinted. The question is why. You’ve got a system that works with one-tenth of 1% of their permits revoked. You’re not going to be able to improve on that with fingerprints.”Van Cleave says the carry permit bills, along with nearly 30 other anti-gun bills being considered in Virginia this session, is all about taking guns from law-abiding citizens.

“This is all about disarmament, this is not about crime,” Van Cleave said. “They just use crime as their excuse to disarm us. That’s why they want the police to be funded. They want release violent criminals from jail early, they want to get rid of bail. They’re doing all this to drive the crime rate up so they can use that as their excuse to take away guns.”

In the end, Van Cleave says Democrats are exploiting their one-vote majority by acting like the slim edge won in the last election was some kind of mandate from voters on more gun control.

“This is the Democrat party going back to its grassroots,” he said. “In the early days it formed to protect slavery. They were the party of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan in the South, protecting slavery and trying to take away the  rights of citizens back then, especially minorities, to own guns. Fast forward 150 years and here we go again.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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39 COMMENTS

  1. They did the same thing here in CT. They banned open carry that was never a problem as criminals don’t open carry. They also banned private sales between legal law abiding individuals. They then put a 3 gun a month clause as well. Democrats are the true fascists

    • The bill from VA “…makes it illegal for a concealed handgun permit holder to carry a concealed handgun onto the premises of any restaurant or club that sells alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption, whether the permit holder drinks any alcohol or not.”

      This is already the case in CA. When bearing my EDC, I’m not allowed to step into any bar or establishment whose primary purpose is the serving of alcohol, or that serves more alcohol than food.

      • Haz, the VA bill goes further — any restaurant that serves alcohol, period. Not “primary purpose” — ANY alcohol.

        Next is banning carry into any grocery store that sells alcohol.

        • Florida doesn’t require “state stores” to sell hard liquor. It does require a seperate liquor license than that which is given to a grocery store to sell beet and wine in its own aisle next to groceries .

          There are grocery stores such as Publix that have a Publix liquor store right next to their grocery store although with a seperate door in and out of it. They can’t sell hard liquor in the same store that they sell groceries and beer/wine but it can be the next storefront over and under the same roof.

          ABC liquor is another big private liquor store chain in Florida that is not owned and run by the state even though “ABC Stores” in other states actually are state-run stores where ABC stands for “Alcoholic Beverage Control.” The people who named the ABC store here were being clever and decided to let the anti-alcohol states do their marketing for them. ABC is an awesome liquor store and also has a great selection of their own house-brand ABC liquors that are fantastic as well as cheap. Nothing like buying a 1.75 liter bottle of rum for under $15 out the door including tax. Some of the other varieties are even cheaper.

        • Nikita Tesla is right, no state stores for the hard stuff in Florida.

          HOWEVER, one liquor store chain calls themselves ABC as a way to lure in northern states tourists :

          https://www.abcfws.com/

      • And of course, as a customer, how do you know, or prove, that the place sells more value / revenue in food than in alcohol.
        Many tablecloth restaurants break even on food and make their money on alcohol.
        Remember, to DemonRats, the process IS the punishment

  2. The president of VCDL reports that Virginia revokes CHPs at a rate of one-tenth of one percent.

    For the math challenged, that’s one in a THOUSAND.

    I don’t believe one could identify a MORE law-abiding demographic than that, perhaps other than “dead.”

    It is indisputable that the Democrats are “after our guns,” and could not care less about stopping crime.

  3. The law makes perfect sense.

    Mixing guns and booze is a prescription for disaster. Wyatt Earp’s Tombstone was a much safer place because even Earp banned guns in bars and anywhere in the city limits. The shoot out at the OK corral was over that gun control law and the good guys won because the Clantons that did not obey the gun control law got what was coming to them.

    Many, many shootings take place when people are drinking booze, they lose control of themselves and shoot each other up for the most trivial of reasons. The Naked Ape is vicious enough when sober and armed but put booze in him and he becomes a raging homicidal maniac in seconds, especially if he is male and under 25 years of age.

    Three cheers for the Dems in Virginia because they are attempting to civilized the State.

    • Did you not read anything or are you incapable of logic? Guns are legal in Virginia bars today, and there are no problems. This law has nothing to do with the consumption of alcohol while carrying a firearm.
      For context, we have a similar law in Washington. If I walk through the bar (21+) section of a restaurant to reach the bathroom, while carrying a firearm, it’s a misdemeanor, even if I don’t touch alcohol. But I can get completely drunk in the restaurant section while carrying.
      The point of laws like this is not safety. The point is making carrying and owning a gun inconvenient to reduce both.

      • dacian has a reading comprehension and logical thinking issue problem, he frequently displays it.

        • Guns and alcohol do not mix anymore than two ton vehicle projectiles and alcohol mix. As long as the individual is sober they are doing no harm and they are safe to operate heavy equipment, etc.

          This VA concocted fear mongering is an excuse for Gun Control Control-Freaks like darcydodo to threat sober law abiding gun owning citizens like they all belong in a drunk tank. In his pea sized brain if you own a firearm you are automatically someone he assumes he can look down his pompous dictatorial nose at. The kkk and nazis also thought along those lines.

    • Dacian the Doofus are you serious? You make it sound like anybody who swigs down some brewskys just goes buck wild shoot em up on everybody. The stats just dont bear that out though. You must not have read the article you ding dong. That was exactly what it was saying is not happening. Climb back down into your hole troll

    • dacian logic example:

      those under age 25 are incapable of mature thought and emotion, enough to carry a gun so guns must be banned for them…

      but, according to dacian and all anti-gun those police officers under age 25 are good to go for gun carry despite ~47,000 incidents nationwide (in 2023 alone) where police officers ‘unintentionally’ or ‘accidentally’ fired their firearms while the firearm was in their hand (this includes training, while pursuing criminals, at property of others, and in some cases at or in direction of other citizens that were not the criminals being pursued and were simply ‘bystanders’, and in some cases the criminal was ‘unintentionally’ or ‘accidentally’ fired upon after they were in custody) and a person being 12,137 times more likely to be shot ‘unintentionally’ or ‘accidentally’ by a police officer than they are by an ordinary law abiding armed citizen of any age.

      • to Booger Brain

        quote————-but, according to dacian and all anti-gun those police officers under age 25 are good to go for gun carry ———quote

        I never made such a statement and its been the Liberals who have demanded better police training and holding cops accountable in unjustified shootings.

        As a matter of fact its been the Far Right that have defended the cops in almost all of the racist killings that were unjustified i.e. the George Floyd murder was claimed justified by the Far Right.

    • “The shoot out at the OK corral was over that gun control law and the good guys won because the Clantons that did not obey the gun control law got what was coming to them.”

      The shoot out did not take place “at the OK corral”. Instead, it happened in a vacant lot next to C.S. Fly’s Photographic Studio and Boarding House, six doors down from the corral.

      Wyatt Earp was actually a fugitive from the law when he moved to Tombstone hoping to make his fortune in silver. He was a horse thief, escaped jail and went on the run, moving from town to town and brothel to brothel.

      Witnesses in court said the cowboys had surrendered and put down their weapons, the Earps and Holiday then open fired on them after that. The cowboys grabbed what firearms they could that they had put down, to defend them selves and a ‘shoot out’ ensued lasting around a minute. Prior going to the supposedly ‘arrest’ the cowboys, the Earps had vowed to kill them due to a long standing conflict between the earps and the cowboys. This was not a glorious ‘good guys won’ thing.

    • If you actually read the article you would know Virginia is already a civilized state. The numbers prove it.
      The only time you have all those mixing booze and shootings is not in a restaurant by law abiding Va citizens.
      It is criminals.
      Criminals who soft on crime Democrat DAs refuse to prosecute.
      Did you recently see the black activist on MSNBC who claimed, “We can get rid of all the crime in America overnight, just like that,”
      And people ask ‘how attorney Crump?’ – change the definition of crime.”
      “If you get to define what conduct is gonna be made criminal, you can predict who the criminals are gonna be,” added Crump.
      “They made the laws to criminalize our culture – black culture,”

      So, to steal, beat up innocent people, shoot and murder people is . . . black culture?
      And how civilized is that, to decriminalize crime?

    • DUNDERHEAD, please tell me you are kidding. Just how does this idiotic law make sense? You have just created another target rich environment for your criminal and terrorist buds. I have no problem with banning guns from a bar as I don’t go to a bar armed, but banning them from places that serve food as their main staple?
      “many many shootings take place in a bar”? Horse feathers. Most shootings take place in the street or in the home. Give us stats on how many shootings (illegal) take place in a bar?
      I am in favor of more training with firearms for police. But there is only so much money in a budget to go to training. I would love to see police officers have to qualify quarterly, but the cost is all but prohibitive especially for small departments making it while practical, not feasable.

  4. Many of us are very familiar with the phrase, “follow the money,” and its implication that, when someone is doing something unsavory, all we have to do is identify the profit motive and we will identify the true reason and actors behind the activity. Well, I am here to tell you that a very large number of people do not have any monetary profit motive behind their activity. Instead, their motive is to humiliate and antagonize others. Note that said scumbags whose “profit motive” is humiliating and antagonizing others do so at their own financial expense rather than financial gain.

    I am absolutely convinced that a great number of people who advocate for civilian disarmament are doing so because they want to humiliate and antagonize us–they are not truly trying to increase public safety.

    If you are not yet convinced, just look at the concept of “trolls” such as a couple recurring commenters on this forum. They “troll” us because they get sick and demented satisfaction out of antagonizing us. The fact that such people exist is indisputable. The only possible topic of debate is whether they are satisfied with trolling a website or if they go well beyond and try to enact laws to “troll” us.

      • I posted it for few different reasons:

        its the kinda stuff TTAG should be showing in ads instead of this crap that comes up, you know, show gun stuff in ads, and they should be showcasing it in articles too. and I know there are a few people that read here that would like to know about it.

        so call it a PSA

  6. So basically, Dems Target Criminals to allow them to continue to carry in restaurants …. I guess ’cause this delusional thing Dems have that criminals obey laws.

  7. A little over 30 years ago Texans were prohibited from having a firearm in a dining establishment and the Luby’s Cafeteria massacre happened. Look it up.

  8. Don’t worry, the democrats will always ensure you have your Bread and Circuses of legal butt, sex and drugs.

    “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

    “If you want peace then prepare for war.”

    But there are those who have a very different opinion.

    “Why it’s Ok to not vote.” Catherine Mangu Ward. A great libertarian. Video 50 min long.

    https://youtu.be/KSmBG1uU1ig?si=XHHdRBS9uFJsZ-t7

  9. The simple solution is that when I am in Virginia (and I do spend a couple of months each year there) I simply will not go into such restaurants or spend any money in them.

    Their loss. I’ll spend the extra money on Ammo and guns. My cooking is better 95% of the time anyhow, but I do like to spend money in the communities I am spending my time in. If the restaurant owners want my business and the business of like-minded EDC-ers they can fix their state and lobby to stop such silly & self-destructive rules.

    • Mahdi of his district, Saddam Salim, wants us unarmed and unable to fight back when his moslem crimmigrant rapefugee brethren storm into restaurants committing terror attacks. They’re intent on Bataclan-ed & 10/7-ing every last one of us “infidels”.

  11. Yes it’s a big deal that they want to keep diners vulnerable while they’re in the restaurants – remember the Luby’s Cafeteria attack in Texas. Will the restaurants hire security guards at the entrances?

    But mass shootings are vanishingly uncommon. The real danger of “gun-free” edicts lies in the interstitial transitional spaces while we’re moving from one place to another. In this case, those are the parking lots outside the restaurants. If you are forced to store your defensive tool in your car, will the restaurant hire security guards to accompany patrons walking from their car to the front door, and from the front door back to their car? Will those security guards keep an eye on the cars with guns stored inside to be sure the owners won’t be victimized by a smash-and-grab theft?

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