I gathered from about everyone one of them that a large concern was legalizing pot...im no pot smoking hippie ill assure you. I told Sarvis to his face that it was the wrong time and too much was on the line. We gain nothing with this crap and stand to lose everything. Ive stood with pvc and ed and I stand today with them.
There can never be a wrong time to limit governmental aggression, or to expand liberty. Especially when other states have already granted their citizens this important liberty, expanding their economic and personal freedom and helping to reduce crime.
It is a real shame that the two-party duopoly has convinced Americans that they need to pick and choose between liberties, that a gain in one liberty must come at the expense of another, and that infringement of the liberties one does
not exercise directly does not in any way influence exercise of the liberties one
does wish to engage in.
It's foolish to think that the War on Drugs (even on marijuana specifically) does not impact our RKBA. The most obvious example is that our right to home defense has been drastically watered down in its efficacy by the proliferation (and legal toleration) of no-knock raids, which all too frequently fall on the innocent (be it thanks to bad evidence or a wrong address). This is nearly wholly a product of the war on drugs, and marijuana is an incredibly common target of these unconstitutional, liberty-destroying and dangerous raids.
As it happens, an AG in Virginia could probably effectively end this practice overnight. However, our heroically staunch 2A-advocating AG-turned-failed-GOP-candidate-for-Governor has done nothing about this in his term. This being the case, the most practicable way to limit this practice and restore Virginians' security in their homes is to begin to limit the War on Drugs.
Now is very much the time. In fact, folks keep saying that we can't make any advances with McAuliffe as governor. This is
precisely the sort of real RKBA advance that
could make past a Democratic veto.
If only, you know, we could get over our view of liberty as being divided between two camps (or, even more incongruously, solely in the camp of the GOP).