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Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Nope, I wouldn't bat an eye, particularly in the context of the city council meeting, and at least as long as nobody unholstered their gun (in which case I'm laughing as I imagine the rest of the people in the meeting, including the city council and Sgt. at Arms, unholstering their guns too). In context, this was a completely obvious political statement from people I simply do not see as scary. It would seem that very few people in NoVa would seem scary to me.
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I'd hope that most of the 30 walked in with a giant smirk to let everyone know that it was all in fun (to make a political statement). If these guys so much as glared at anyone on the way in, it would have made them suspicious or even dangerous, and they would have rightfully been stopped (armed civilian, glaring at anyone on the way into a government building is pretty, uhm, suspicious).
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Somehow I doubt that smirks were the order of the day. Guns aren't funny. To either the people who carry them or the people who feel threatened by them.
But you seem to have missed my main point. Why would someone, absent protest, need to take a gun into a municiple building? There is no reason. Thus the policy (put in place before anybody got the idea to protest, and almost certainly without thinking that anyone would care) was a good one: someone coming into a municiple building with a gun is suspicious. The reg just allows the poor government worker a little cover so that s/he doesn't have to decide if the person looks menacing/deranged.
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In any case, the second guy doesn't need to be arrested, particularly when they have committed no crime. People who don't like the state's guns laws are free to move somewhere else. Ironically, almost anywhere else similar is not going to be as safe. Weird that.
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Why have you decided this should be a state level issue? Why not local? Why not Federal? Why shouldn't the good people of Falls Church (and despite the shameful circumstances of the city's founding, they are good people) be able to decide the level of gun control within their own community? Why should the people of Roanoke and Richmond be able to force their views and values on Falls Church, merely because 350 years ago someone in England thought the Potomac river looked like a good place to divide up the territories controlled by two different Crown functionaries?
Personally, except for clearance issues (i.e. background checks to prevent felons from buying guns), and the regulation of the upper limit of firepower (no RPG's, etc.) I think gun control is a very local issue. Densely urban areas have different needs than rural communities, who are different again than affluent suburbs. Even in rural areas, there are differences between places like Wsetern Pennsylvania compared to West Texas. Some places the populace views a gun like a shovel, some like a football, some like canon. Who better to evaluate that then local municipalities?
Frankly, I see the action of the NRA in Falls Church to be nothing more than a tiny minority with the backing of an outside force imposing its ideals on an unwilling community, as inappropriate as denizens of Detroit, Boston or New York City imposing their views on guns on the rural communities in the rest of their states, or Congress overturning DCs ban on guns, despite absolutely no support among the DC populace.
