The Latest Scheme to Turn Gun Owners into Criminals

Gun-owners, they are coming: on March 21, a Fredericksburg man was prosecuted and convicted of the misdemeanor crime of merely holding a B.B. gun in public.  I know because I was in the trial, as the attorney defending Mr. Wolff.

The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms.  However, gun control activists are trying to criminalize gun ownership.  Their next step is that you are a criminal if you take a gun out in public.  If they have to let you own a gun, you can't ever take it out of its case.

Liberals continue to try to criminalize private ownership of guns, despite losing a key battle in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 2820–2821, 171 L.Ed.2d 637, (2008).  Unlike conservatives, left-wingers never quit.  They intend to win the war eventually and disarm the American people.

Now they claim that it is illegal to "open carry" a firearm.  The mere existence of a gun if anyone else is around now has become the crime of "brandishing" and/or "assault" (which means frightening people, contrary to popular misunderstanding) or both.

In Virginia, in the Fredericksburg General District Court, my client was charged with two counts of "brandishing" a firearm under Va. Code § 18.2-282 and two counts of assault under the all-purpose (vague) Va. Code §18.2-57, for a single incident that took no more than 30 seconds.  (In my own defense, I took the case knowing that Virginia statutes are bad and need to be challenged by a campaign of appeals.)