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Richmond City Council Anti-freedom Agenda

Grapeshot

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Richmond Mayor and City Council again show their anti-freedom, lack of understanding by promoting "closing the gun show loophole." The minutes of the Nov. 22, 2010 meeting are not yet on-line, but I am advised that a resolution was passed to encourage the GA to take up this matter again.

Excuse me ladies and gentleman, but there is NO loophole. An honest citizen has the right to sell his/her private property without constraint from the state. If this were a direct source of criminals getting guns, I would be willing to take another look at it - but it is NOT. No neutral party study has ever validated this contention - quite to the contrary.

http://www.stoppingpower.net/commentary/comm_cop_killers.asp

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=260&issue=014

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/fbi-crime-stats-show-an-armed-public-is-a-safer-public/

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2009/crime2009

Unfortunately the Richmond City Council and the Mayor seem more interested in promoting their unsupported and faulty claim than learning the facts and being good stewards of the trust placed in them.

ETA: note the vote of support for the resolution was 9-0
 
Last edited:

All American Nightmare

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Never Never Land
Richmond Mayor and City Council again show their anti-freedom, lack of understanding by promoting "closing the gun show loophole." The minutes of the Nov. 22, 2010 meeting are not yet on-line, but I am advised that a resolution was passed to encourage the GA to take up this matter again.

Excuse me ladies and gentleman, but there is NO loophole. An honest citizen has the right to sell his/her private property without constraint from the state. If this were a direct source of criminals getting guns, I would be willing to take another look at it - but it is NOT. No neutral party study has ever validated this contention - quite to the contrary.

http://www.stoppingpower.net/commentary/comm_cop_killers.asp

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=260&issue=014

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/fbi-crime-stats-show-an-armed-public-is-a-safer-public/

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2009/crime2009

Unfortunately the Richmond City Council and the Mayor seem more interested in promoting their unsupported and faulty claim than learning the facts and being good stewards of the trust placed in them.

ETA: note the vote of support for the resolution was 9-0
Maybe it is time to attent another council meeting?
 

Dreamer

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The State of Virginia should just go ahead and hand over Richmond to Maryland. They apparently want to be part of the PRM, not a city in a free commonwealth...
 

Grapeshot

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The State of Virginia should just go ahead and hand over Richmond to Maryland. They apparently want to be part of the PRM, not a city in a free commonwealth...

Not going to do it - that would be too much to their liking. Anyone or all of them should feel free to relocate there though - I believe that freedom will catch up with those enclaves too one day and their running away from freedom will have been for naught.

I happen to like Richmond and some of the things the city has to offer - just think that a few of the people are a bit .........unusual and illogical. Maybe it's the KoolAid they put in the water there. :D
 

Repeater

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Style Weekly has report on Dance Hall violence

This is worth reading to see how authoritarian Richmond is:

After the Party - Race, politics and dancing: How the city’s crackdown on nightclubs is dredging up some old demons, by Scott Bass and Vernal Coleman. Photos by Scott Elmquist.

The club unwittingly has become ground zero in the city’s political war on nightlife. A fight that erupted outside the club in April led to an exchange of gunfire in the adjacent parking lot, killing a Petersburg man. It was one of many incidents throughout the city this year, including two teen dance parties that turned violent on West Broad Street and another spring shooting in the Bottom.

In the process the neighborhood has become exhibit A amid a growing perception that nightlife in the city has become unruly, violent and out of control — leading City Council to adopt a controversial dance hall ordinance Sept. 13, which attempts to hold club owners accountable for violence that spills into the streets.

In a span of a few short weeks, the two murders in Shockoe Bottom led to a show of force by Richmond police and City Hall. A three-club event in mid-May, which goading promoters dubbed Shockoe Bottom Shutdown, drew heavy police presence — officers on horseback, a mobile police command center and tower, complete with spotlights and a city street sweeper that doused the sidewalks to disperse crowds when the clubs let out.

Many see the ordinance as a necessity. It requires more security officers for larger crowds, for example, and background checks for club managers and promoters. It passed unanimously, with the mayor’s blessing.

But others say there are larger forces at play. They worry that restrictive regulations will make it difficult for clubs to stay in business, undermining the city’s growing reputation as a thriving regional hub for arts, culture and music.

...

Under the new rules, dance hall owners are barred from bringing in promoters who have been convicted of any of a litany of criminal offenses specified by the new ordinance — possession or conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance or firearm, for example. Some say a conviction for what might be a minor offense shouldn’t prevent someone from entering the business.

The Ordinance is 2010-113-159, approved unanimously by City Council on Sept. 13, 2010. It has far more on firearms than the article above implies.

Municode has NOT updated their code to include the ordinance, so you have to go get the ordinance yourself by going here.

Race and culture, combined with guns, are a volatile mix. The easy way out is to blame lax gun laws and respond with authoritarian remedies that don't work. It is a brave soul that says what needs saying; David Codrea is such a soul -- see here:

Anti-gun rappers' aim to curb violence off target

We can't neglect looking at race--not as a cause of violent crime, but as an indicator of populations most directly affected by and responsive to a continuing history of Liberty-eroding government policies.

If we're afraid to even address this, we're never going to be able to make things right. And those hurt the most by this self-imposed blindness will continue to be the least prosperous and protected among us.
 

Dreamer

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Saying that dance halls, or rap artists, or young black people are the cause of this problem is just as stupid, offensive, and nonsensical as saying that guns are the problem.

There are PLENTY of DJs, dance-hall patrons, and night-lifers who are just everyday people who want to go out and have a good time. Sure some of them drink to excess. Sure some of them might get stupid and throw a punch. But to imply that they are all a bunch of ruthless gangbangers carrying illegal weapons, and the only way to remedy this problem is to shut down these dance halls is, at the very least, idiotic, and at it's worst, a flat-out racist ploy to destroy the ability for an entire segment to enjoy their nights out.

This whole issue reminds me of the Hearst Newspaper stories back in the 1930's in the Western states about how Mexicans and Blacks were smoking marijuana, and it was causing them to look lustfully at white women. It was the yellow journalism of the Hearst Newspapers (that just so happened to have spent the previous decade buying up pulp wood farms in the Pacific NW--which just so happened to have as its only competitor the Hemp industry in the US...) in order to make Marijuana (Hemp) illegal.

There is something else in the works in Richmond--this current issue has NOTHING to do with shootings in parking lots, or "rap culture", or any of that foolishness. The VAST majority of these shootings are committed by repeat offenders, and people with prior records. It is a TINY percentage of the population that is committing these crimes (in Richmond, Baltimore, DC, Chicago, etc), and these new laws are essentially the 21st century equivalent of the Jim Crow laws of the 19th century, or the "Zoot Suit" prohibitions of the 1940s in California.

It's getting more and more that in the news stories, and government responses from Richmond, you could simply replace the word "Richmond" with "Baltimore" and it could be accurate...

Wake up, Richmond. Your government has been taken over by racist eugenicists who hate freedom, and are doing EVERYTHING in their power to destroy small business and what's left of the middle class, foment racial tensions, and divide the good citizens into fractious antagonistic enclaves.

Wake up, Richmond...
 

peter nap

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There is something else in the works in Richmond--this current issue has NOTHING to do with shootings in parking lots, or "rap culture", or any of that foolishness. The VAST majority of these shootings are committed by repeat offenders, and people with prior records. It is a TINY percentage of the population that is committing these crimes (in Richmond, Baltimore, DC, Chicago, etc), and these new laws are essentially the 21st century equivalent of the Jim Crow laws of the 19th century, or the "Zoot Suit" prohibitions of the 1940s in California.

It's getting more and more that in the news stories, and government responses from Richmond, you could simply replace the word "Richmond" with "Baltimore" and it could be accurate...

...
You're pretty observant Dreamer.
The big murder problem in Richmond goes in cycles and can usually be traced back to one group.
The Brown family for instance, kicked the rate way up. When they were gone the murder rate shrank and the PD took the bows for efficient policing (which was untrue).

Another problem is of course, the projects. That's a difficult issue because not everyone in the projects are criminals. A very small percentage are but among the younger people, the temptation is there.

I had the unpleasant task of serving on a regional planning commission with some of Richmond leaders. (I was civilized for a short period) Walter Kenny was one and a more narrow minded, self centered, ill prepared idiot has never existed.

He was one that blamed everything on guns.

There are other issues now also. A large illegal Mexican population that will not report crimes for fear of being deported, poverty in areas that were formerly lower middle class and a bigger student body at VCU (The Fan attracts derelicts like fly's to honey)
 

Repeater

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Who has read the Ordinance?

Let's make it easier for folks to read the new law. Go here: http://eservices.ci.richmond.va.us/applications/clerkstracking/getPDF.asp?NO=2010-113-159

stay safe.

Thanks for the link -- makes it very easy now to download. Has anyone read the ordinance? It's an IMAGE PDF so I can't past what I read, but I have to wonder:

What is conspiracy to possess, sell or distribute firearms?

The ordinance reads like a joke or a parody, except that it's not.
 

skidmark

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Everybody knows that in Virginia a conspiracy is when one person gets together with another person and they are both thinking about doing the same thing. http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+18.2-22

The problem is, a conspiracy to possess, sell or distribute firearms may or may not involve an act that is defined as any sort of a crime, let alone a felony. As has been noted before, it's all about control.

And might I remind all of you who are talking about Jim Crow and Zoot Suit laws that in the Richmond Metro Area the folks who are melanin-deprived are the minority. We need to come up with a more accurate phrase. :>) *

stay safe.

* PLEASE notice the emoticon. It's there to indicate a lack of prejudice and racial bias on my part. I'm just trying to say if we are going to epithets we ought to be more precise and accurate in describing who we are "epithetting" about.
 

TFred

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Let's make it easier for folks to read the new law. Go here: http://eservices.ci.richmond.va.us/applications/clerkstracking/getPDF.asp?NO=2010-113-159

stay safe.
Upon a quick skim of the 24 page ordinance, it looks like the firearms sections are at the bottom of page 6 and top of page 7, and also on page 12.

Both sections basically state that nobody can be involved in a nightclub event if they have been convicted of a crime within the past 5 years involving:

"the possession, sale or distribution of, attempted possession, sale or distribution of, or conspiracy to possess, sell or distribute a controlled substance, alcohol or firearms..."​

Now IANAL, but I honestly don't see how this ordinance can possibly be legal.

The Preemption statute clearly states:

A. No locality shall adopt or enforce any ordinance, resolution or motion, as permitted by § 15.2-1425, and no agent of such locality shall take any administrative action, governing the purchase, possession, transfer, ownership, carrying, storage or transporting of firearms, ammunition, or components or combination thereof other than those expressly authorized by statute.​

What this new city ordinance literally does is impose an additional punishment on someone for violating firearms laws. That is certainly going to fall under the act of "governing the purchase, possession, transfer, ownership, carrying, storage or transporting of firearms", which the law specifically says they may not do.

I don't think this is even close.

Now we are getting into the General Assembly season. It may not be a good idea to raise a stink about this right now, or we'll see one of the Richmond folks introduce a state-wide bill to this effect. We learned this the hard way last year up north.

TFred
 

Grapeshot

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How is this different from saying that a convicted pedophile cannot work in a day care center or someone with a firearms felony conviction can't work at a gun counter?

I do not agree with what they have done nor the linking of two non-related (IMO) elements. They are saying that if you have been convicted of a gun crime (overly broad) you cannot work at a certain type of job within the city - that might not be legal, but it certainly doesn't run afoul of § 15.2-915 (preemption) at all.
 

TFred

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How is this different from saying that a convicted pedophile cannot work in a day care center or someone with a firearms felony conviction can't work at a gun counter?

I do not agree with what they have done nor the linking of two non-related (IMO) elements. They are saying that if you have been convicted of a gun crime (overly broad) you cannot work at a certain type of job within the city - that might not be legal, but it certainly doesn't run afoul of § 15.2-915 (preemption) at all.
Easy: There is no specific state law that says someone convicted of a gun crime cannot work at a nightclub in Richmond.

I don't know pedophile laws, but I suspect there are parts of the punishment (that are within the state level guidelines) that govern access to children. There are other laws that specifically restrict gun criminals from access to guns.

Preemption is our friend. It was designed specifically to prevent this sort of a law from being enacted. I think this law very much violates it. This law imposes additional, local, penalties beyond that which the state has already provided for a crime involving firearms.

Some theoretical person who wants to work with a club in Richmond would have paid their debt to society. Except in Richmond, where they aren't quite done yet.

Just because the victims of this law are criminals does not make it a good law, or one that we should ignore with a wink and a nod.

Do we have state-wide preemption of all firearms laws, or don't we?

TFred
 

Repeater

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Richmond, Virginia, USA
Dillon Rule

I do not agree with what they have done nor the linking of two non-related (IMO) elements. They are saying that if you have been convicted of a gun crime (overly broad) you cannot work at a certain type of job within the city - that might not be legal, but it certainly doesn't run afoul of § 15.2-915 (preemption) at all.

The real question is, how is the ordinance compliant with the Dillon Rule? Did the General Assembly grant Richmond this authority?
 

Grapeshot

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Do we have state-wide preemption of all firearms laws, or don't we?

TFred

I would ask you that.
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The real question is, how is the ordinance compliant with the Dillon Rule? Did the General Assembly grant Richmond this authority?

That may well be the better question and one to be settled by the courts or GA and the short session (limited # of bills) is not likely to find a sponsor for a low priority item. Alternately, the Attorney General could be asked to give an opinion to a well worded question.
 
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