By Jason Rantz
Antifa thugs armed with semi-automatic weapons took over six-blocks of Seattle, dubbing it the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). These amateur security forces patrolled the area and set up security checkpoints. At one point, a man was caught on tape handing out semi-automatic rifles from the trunk of his car to apparent strangers to protect the area from non-existent right-wing threats. They were playing a dangerous game of police cosplay.
Democrat politicians generally either defended or ignored the Antifa violence at CHAZ. They treated the violence that raged across the region for months the same way.
But the moment conservatives showed up to their own rallies armed, suddenly Democrats were quick to act.
After the notorious and deadly “summer of love,” Washington legislators are now trying to ban the right to open-carry at public protests. It’s a Democrat attempt at killing two birds with one stone: attacking both the right to bear arms and peacefully assemble in one bill.
Ignoring the fact that Washington is an open-carry state, activists are pushing Democrats to ban open carry at protests under the specious argument that it intimidates the opposition.
“We’re focusing this year on restrictions to open carry, we really have to stop the intimidation through the open carry of firearms,” Renee Hopkins, Executive Director of Washington’s Alliance for Gun Responsibility, told a local radio station, citing the shootings in Kenosha, WI and local conflicts at rallies in Olympia, WA. “And this is one of the most alarming trends that we’ve seen this year is the increase in armed vigilante activity and threats with firearms.”
Imagine activists proudly declaring a focus on restrictions of specific speech during protests. It’d be met with justifiable outrage.
Yet in Washington state, where anti-gun activists are supported by a Democrat-controlled legislature, chipping away at gun rights has become a sport. Never mind that conservative activists often open-carry for personal protection as police are reluctant to get involved when Antifa agitators arrive to counter “protest” with threatened violence.
Unfortunately, this ban has support. The Senate bill, pre-filed by Democratic State Senators Patty Kuderer and Mona Das, already has 15 total sponsors.
“We’ve had quite a few examples in the last few months of armed folks showing up at other people’s protests with the apparent intent to intimidate or threaten them from being able to exercise their First Amendment rights,” State Senator Jamie Pedersen (D-Seattle) warned during a conference in December.
This move is highly ironic, given how Antifa activists and other criminal agitators held the region hostage for months, openly displaying weapons at events deemed “peaceful protests” by the national media. Instead of being condemned, they were either ignored or supported by Democrat lawmakers.
But these arrogant old pompious Peacocks can strut around surrounded by armed Bodyguards How quickly they forget this is not a Monarchy its a Republic
IMAGINE? Hell, it’s happening!
Yeah, someone open carrying intimidates… ANTIFA thugs from their favorite pastime of attacking unarmed and unprotected people. Rittenhouse’s carrying served the precise purpose for which it was intended; to defend him from attacks. He was attacked three separate times and he defended himself. Without his weapon, he would probably be dead.
This is a perfect example of what the 2nd Amendment is for; the corrupt government wants The People to be disarmed so that their surrogate terrorists can attack every opposition voice. The left wants to destroy the 1st Amendment, but the 2nd Amendment prevents it. A more perfect example could not be imagined.
This is what was once commonly known as common sense.
@Greg: If a State allows open carry whats the big deal? It keeps Antifa from cold cocking those that are armed.
Despite Gov. Northam and some members of the media painting the rally-goers as far-right and even racist extremists, the Monday event concluded without a single incident of violence. (RELATED: The Media Was Desperate, But Virginia’s Gun Rally Proved Them All Wrong)
Northam’s administration banned concealed and open-carry firearms from capital grounds for the event. Roughly 6,000 people went through airport-style security to make it into the fenced-off Capitol while roughly 16,000 others remains outside, many of them armed, according to the Wall Street Journal.
@Greg: Common sense would be not supporting political terrorists. Democrats don’t seem to have that common sense. So that means everyone that is not a terrorist needs to be armed so they are not terrorized. See what you’ve created? Nice, huh?
@Greg:
comrade greggy-poo: why not pack your backs and what ever clothing and toiletries you may need and move to CHAZ. you can act a one of their propaganda ministers in spreading the sewage of their communist ideology of destruction and perversion. where you aware that marx was a pedophile, criminal and never held a real job? bet none of inhabitants of CHAZ can read past a 7th grade level or have even read marxist manifesto?
go on comrade greggy-poo make the jump.