Repeater
Regular Member
So says Style Weekly, so it must be true:
In the wake of Newtown, Virginia’s most extreme pro-gun lobbyist sees an opportunity.
[size=+3] Mr. Phil Van Cleave -- Lobbyist Extraordinaire[/size]
In the wake of Newtown, Virginia’s most extreme pro-gun lobbyist sees an opportunity.
Philip Van Cleave can't help himself. At a time when many people involved in the pro-gun movement are embracing strategic silence, the outspoken president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League is quoted two days after the Newtown, Conn., shooting in the Washington Post. He compares firing a Bushmaster assault-style rifle like the one used in the school massacre to driving a Ferrari — they're both just fun, he says.
Last week in response to an editorial in the Richmond Times-Dispatch outlining the gun debate Virginians can expect, Van Cleave is compelled to post a comment noting that his group would like to see the elimination of federal restrictions on machine guns, though it's currently a low priority.
Van Cleave understands these statements can be, well, a bit off-putting to some. He's unapologetic. "Sometimes you just have to get out there and just put these things out there," Van Cleave says. "I'm not a big fan of political correctness."
That's perhaps an understatement. The Virginia Citizens Defense League is unabashedly extreme in its views, but it's also been somewhat successful in efforts through the years, steadily chipping away at the state's gun laws.
Van Cleave, a slight, bald, 60-year-old computer programmer who sports a gray mustache, says he almost never leaves the house without a gun. He says he feels helpless when he isn't carrying.
It's that philosophy that has informed Van Cleave's years of activism, and it's exactly that kind of thinking that repulses the league's opponents on the left.
"If you ever listened to them down at the General Assembly it would make your hair curl," says Andrew Goddard, president of the Virginia Center for Public Safety, which is pushing bills that would require background checks for all firearms sales. "They are right off the reservation as far as logic and common sense are concerned."
How much sway they have with Republicans in the General Assembly is a matter of debate.
"They certainly seem to carry a lot of weight with members on the other side of the aisle," says state Sen. A. Donald McEachin, a Henrico Democrat. "I'm not surprised because the Republican Party for years has sort of embraced the extreme right wing."
But one Republican strategist says the group's tactics — such as organizing protests at libraries and stores where activists openly carry weapons — sometimes do more to embarrass lawmakers than convince them.
A Republican legislative aide who works with the group's supporters and detractors put it this way: "They're good at the noise part, but at the end of the day, there's one gun rights group that really matters and a bunch of other gun rights groups that combined don't add up to the influence of that one. And that one is the NRA."
[size=+3] Mr. Phil Van Cleave -- Lobbyist Extraordinaire[/size]