Following the mass murders and woundings in Orlando, one Virginia city wants lawmakers in Richmond and Washington to require background checks for people buying guns and to ban the sale of assault weapons and high capacity magazines. In response, some citizens began lying down on the floor of city council, and one man suggested the tragedy in Orlando was a hoax.
State law doesn’t allow localities like Charlottesville to limit the sale of firearms, but city council members here felt the need to pass a resolution Monday, demanding state and national legislation banning the sale of assault weapons and requiring comprehensive background checks for gun buyers.
As soon as that item appeared on the agenda, councilman Bob Fenwick started getting e-mails … more than 500 of them.
“I had more e-mails from the NRA people than I’ve had on every other issues that we’ve had combined.”
A few protestors showed up at the meeting carrying guns, and about a dozen sat through two-and-a-half hours of city business to object. Daniel Moore said he’d driven 36 miles, from Columbia, Virginia, to speak his mind. He vowed not to spend any money in Charlottesville if the resolution passed and insisted all these mass shootings were part of a conspiracy to take people’s guns away.
“D.C. has an agenda. The agenda is to cause mass shootings, each one with higher casualties, until finally the state achieves confiscation. That is the goal. I say, ‘Show me the bodies.’ I see them carrying mannequins down the road back toward the Pulse. Show me some bodies. Show me some bodies from Sandy Hook. The parents couldn’t even see their kids. It’s called false flags. Our government has been doing it for years – the Bay of Tonkin – all sorts of things.”
Joe Drago of Charlottesville was equally angry.
“Why in the world would we trust any of you? You hypocrites! You talk about safety. You want public safety, but none of you had the courage to mention that the shooter happened to be a Muslim.”
He suggested that koranic prohibitions on sodomy motivated the shootings in Orlando and attacked all Muslims as monstrous people, prompting Mayor Mike Signer to object.
“And so the Muslims, monstrous maniacs that they are, read their holy book, and then they go out and perpetrate these horrible crimes--”
“I’m going to interrupt you, because we actually prohibit defamatory attacks on individuals or groups in our rules.”
“The constitution guarantees -- no, no. The constitution guarantees me the right to free speech, and I am aloud to speak my mind, and I will do so.”
Drago then lied down on his stomach, forcing two police officers to drag him from the chamber. Another opponent of the resolution then lay down in the same spot, but council members chose to ignore him.
Francis Rousset and Jean Roberston stepped over the protestor to voice concerns about anti-Muslim sentiment.
“My heart is pounding, because to me it is so much a part of what it means to be an American – that you are free to worship as you believe, and we can’t touch that, and to hear anyone speak in a public place such hateful words really frightens me.”
“The shooter of Colombine wasn’t Muslim. Virginia Tech wasn’t Muslim. Sandy Hook wasn’t Muslim. This Muslim stuff has got to stop. Free speech is free speech, but when it starts to infringe on other people’s freedom, that’s it! And you all that don’t like Muslims, just please sit in the back, so I don’t have to hear the negativity about them, because I love them, and that’s what Jesus said we should do.”
Kathy Galvin was absent, but the other four members of Charlottesville City Council then voted for the resolution – similar to ones approved last year and in 2013.
