Northern Virginia is an interesting area. Virginia in general is a”red state,” a Republican stronghold. But the Fairfax County area of Virginia (near Washington, D.C.) is so packed with touchy-feely millennials and big government Democrats that it throws off the politics of the entire state. One gun store is feeling the full force of the local anti-gun fervor as the local elected officials have been engineering a smear campaign with the sole purpose of driving a law abiding business owner out of business for no reason other than his existence offends their sensibilities . . .
From the Washington Times:
Democratic elected officials in Northern Virginia worked together to engineer a campaign against a Fairfax County firearms store in a bid to politicize gun violence and drum up support for a Democrat in an election Tuesday, an exchange of emails shows.
JB Gates, owner of Nova Firearms, opened a shop in McLean after protesters thwarted his expansion efforts in Arlington County by pressuring his landlord into breaking his lease.
Delegate Kathleen Murphy, McLean Democrat, wrote an email to state Sen. Barbara Favola, Arlington Democrat, seeking help in shutting down the gun store. Ms. Favola was instrumental in organizing opposition to Mr. Gates’ shop in Arlington.
“Basically, we convinced the land owner that his business tenants would lose business,” Ms. Favola told Ms. Murphy in a reply. “In other words, moving a gun shop to a small cluster of shops in the middle of a neighborhood was bad for business.
“The argument has to be about supporting small businesses,” Ms. Favola wrote in her email. “The ‘we’ versus ‘they’ argument is winnable with the NRA.”
Ms. Murphy forwarded that email Sept. 25 to other Democrats in her district, including Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust, who is up for re-election Tuesday, saying, “Lets do it.”
The Democratic cabal succeeded in getting the gun store kicked out of its first location, but they re-opened only a little while later in a new location: right next to a local public school. Naturally the Democrats went absolutely insane, and they immediately made the gun store location a political issue. Mailers went out to the local residents on the issue which included inflammatory language basically equating the (100% legal and law abiding) gun store with the root cause of all “gun violence.”
What’s interesting to watch is the fact that this whole situation started because the elected Democrats wanted to ruin the life of one gun store owner who was simply minding his own business and operating 100% within the law. The article in the Washington Times doesn’t really do the emails justice, though. They left out all the best bits, specifically where the elected officials in question start making derogatory statements about the owner of the gun shop. From Bearing Drift:
From the beginning, Foust repeatedly and personally attacked the store’s owners and landlord, stating, among his other attacks, that they lacked “decency and respect” while calling them “antagonistic to our community.”
The truth is that the only people who were being antagonistic were the elected Democrats trying to run a legal business run by law abiding Americans out of their community. I wonder what the response would be if Republican elected officials had acted the same way about a Planned Parenthood office.
Nick,
This issue is not new, and I only wish this would have gotten more attention, as today, November 3, is election day. As I type, polls close in 58 minutes.
The politicians pushed NOVA Firearms to their current location by putting pressure on the property owners at a different location they would have set up in. These shenanigans the libtards are pulling need to stop. We, as conservative folk in the community need to stand and fight for our rights. This means electing other officials to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
Mike from Northern VA.
Thanks for your support.
I voted in Loudoun around noon.
I would have voted first thing in the morning but Billy Burke had me kicked out of the state.
Are the Republucans going to keep the Senate or just the House of Delegates?
We have held the Senate. Glen Sturtevant beat Bloomberg’s money. Gives me warm fuzzies to think he wasted his dough.
Heah Mikey eat $h!t and die!
Every little bit helps. I voted and after reading this, I’ve decided to buy my Christmas present to myself early over at NOVA. They’re going to get a LOT of business from me over the next few months. Just because I really despise what those Dems are doing.
Seven years in NOVA taught me one thing – that you can’t be apathetic to liberal encroachment. When I moved to Loudoun in 2002, it was pretty much a conservative area. By the time I left in 2004, the entire neighborhood composition was changing and democrats were winning local elections. It happened that fast. Moving back in 2009, I didn’t even recognize my old neighborhood so I moved to PWC. by the time I left there in 2014, PWC had elected Obama. Here’s the thing though, PWC and Loudoun are still by and large conservative. How is this happening? It’s because people assumed they did’t need to get involved, that it was a forgone conclusion that Loudoun and PWC are not Fairfax and Arlington. So they didn’t bother to vote, then they were shocked at the results. By the time I left, people in both locations were shrugging their shoulders and saying I guess the liberals have all taken over. Not true! Get out there people! Vote; take a stand. The Dulles gun show is proof that the area is still winnable – if the same number of people who go to that show actually showed up at the voting booth, we wouldn’t have this encroachment. Remember the great rush after Sandy Hook? That place was a mad house for more than a year – same for Winchester and the Fredericksburg shows; Gadsen flags flying, NRA stickers and open carry everywhere. When I showed up to the polls in November 2014, it was mostly democrats standing in line to vote. It was easy to see who they were for because both parties were handing out flyers for their respective candidates. Blue for democrats and green for Repubs. And there were a LOT more blue flyers in the voters hands. Where were all those people from 2012-2013 at the gun shows? They weren’t at the polls with me, standing in the cold to vote out tyranny. Wake up America, wake up or this is the future.
I’m getting irritated by the use of the word “millennials.” As a 23 year old who’s a registered Republican, NRA member, concealed carry license holder and a person who works 40 hours a week and has 15 hours of college classes, being called “touchy-feely” does not ingratiate me to the author.
Anyone who knows anything about Fairfax County, VA also knows that it’s home to the CIA and the NRA is located in Fairfax City. It simply is Virginia’s most powerful and monied county.
Nick said that Fairfax is packed with “touchy-feely” millennials. But at what point did Nick call ALL millennials “touchy-feely?”
He didn’t. So you reacted to something that he didn’t say. Which makes you exactly what you claim not to be.
Wow, haha. As a millennial myself I’m pretty tired of people who can’t just read an article that has no intention of offending them without finding at least one minuscule thing to get all up in arms about…
In this particular instance though, we have to come to terms with the fact that our generation is full of pretty dumb sheeple. No unlike every other generation, come to think of it…
As a fellow millennial, I agree with your statement.
I prefer to refer to Millennials as Generation Null. Clearly the least educated generation in a Century. Are there smart Millennials, sure but your typical member is just plain stupid regardless of how many IQ points they have.
Watch your nomenclature. They are well educated. In “school” until 30, and with all manners of degrees to show for their efforts/willingness to cast themselves as debt slaves/state wards.
Just remember, in Dystopian newspeak, educated means what indoctrinated used to mean.
I will preclude this with a disclaimer. I live in very very rural arkansas. In my opinion, those of my generation (MILLENIAL) that i know are not unlike those before or most likely the ones after. Those of us who have worked hard, not accumulated stupid student debt, and made sound decisions about living within the means we can make, are all conservative, or liberatarian. Those of us who stupidly started off our adulthood with 5 or 6 figures of debt and now have no way to repay it, didn’t work, and lived outside their means naturally are liberal idiots who want big government to come in and save them from theirselves. just my 2 cents, and probably not worth that.
Not that I totally agree with you, but try being a 33 year old gun toting NRA member going for his engineering masters and getting lumped in with these damn kids. I’m starting to get gray hair ffs!
Now get off my lawn!
If you are 33 you’re more like a Gen-Xer, rather than a millenial (Gen-Y). Sometimes we get lumped in with them, but mostly we just fall exactly into the place that the other name for our generation implies we’re at: the forgotten generation.
Most millenials are touchy feely and at best suffer from liberalism. entitlement and/or white guilt, and at worst they are full blown social justice warriors. Whenever I visit Facebook I am reminded why I don’t login very often. Crazy hippy relatives that never grew up and the millenials in my friends groups both spam the same progressive emotional idiocy in my newsfeed, prompting me to log out and find some solace in cleaning my guns and having a stiff drink afterwards.
Wrong:
Anyone who knows anything about NOVA knows Loudoun is the richest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States
Rank County State Median Household Income
1 Loudoun County Virginia $117,876
2 Fairfax County Virginia $109,383
5 Arlington County Virginia $100,474
6 Stafford County Virginia $97,606
I’m not surprised. I see VA going the same way as California over the next two decades. The urban centers along the coast will dominate the political scene of the entire Commonwealth. The idiot voters in VA are menace to the entire State. Virginia’s 74th state district reelected Joe Morrissey to the House of Delegates in a special election held on Tuesday. He celebrated his victory from a jail cell.
I hate these people like the plague they are! I hope they all die a horrible death.
Well… we all die, as will I before the majority of them. The difference is that I will die knowing I did my best all my life, and they will die having done their worst all their lives.
The worst part of that is that the anti gun folk, actually think they are doing good, ridding the earth of those “Nasty old guns”
Can we get around to “doing good” by ridding the world of those nasty old anti-gun folks?
Pwrserge,
If we were as violent as antis claim we could.
Depending on the amount of evidence against the officials, and if they used their positions to coerce, there may be a case made for conspiracy and official coercion unde state ethics rules. I’d at least file the complaint.
Please explain to me how this does not constitute corruption, harassment, and tortious interference with lawful conduct of business?
It does. It’s also likely slander and defamation. They should sue.
I think all we need is a Republican politician saying, “Hey, even we wouldn’t do that to Planned Parenthood. That’s immature and petty.”
Having grown up in NOVA, escaping to New England on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, I can attest to the infuriating behavior of the NIMBYs and rage-whining fascists who scream the loudest and try to make their worst fears real by presenting lies as though they were valid assumptions.
When I participated in community planning meetings with these types and they try to co-opt an issue using these so-called assumptions as pre-ordained facts, it is a simple matter to completely disarm them by calling them out on it. They get a great puzzled look on their faces and wonder what other quick lie they can replace the first failed one with and usually end up furiously denouncing me as a troublemaker – who was elected as community leader 5 years out of 5 by peers & neighbors alike.
Destroy the assumption and you kill the illusion as well. It doesn’t take but 5 minutes to accomplish this and the more fence-sitters present to witness this happening, even more doubt in Democratic leadership is mustered.
My current favorite tactic is to remind people that the Democrats are concentrating on the pursuit of even more useless gun control while they ignore much more important issues that are responsible for exponentially more pain suffering and deaths that are preventable, and that there is plenty of objective proof available that gun control is an abject failure. The undecided/uninformed are grateful to learn these truths. The fascist ignoramous hoplophobes can’t hear me over their own shrill screaming and kvetching.
Publish the contact info for the bitch!
We should troll these sluts to death.
Dial it back. Misogyny and statements that could be misinterpreted as actual death threats don’t help.
Against the pols, we have a nice case for libel and tortuous interference (TI is when you entice someone to commit a tort against somebody else, like encouraging a landlord to breach a lease).
Against the landlord, breach of contract.
I’m pretty sure both can be held liable for the actual damages of the expenses of relocating, including lost sales and profits.
>Virginia in general is a”red state,” a Republican stronghold
>elected Terry McAuliffe
Hah.
The funny thing is, the protestors stirred to action by the politicians’ prevarications and strong arm tactics ended getting quite the opposite of what they purport to want.
I quit exercising my 2A rights 20+ years ago (it was the price I was happy to pay to marry a woman opposed to having a gun in the house). Even once I had no obstacles to ownership it was just not something I thought about.
Then one day, as I was driving my son to a music lesson across the street from nova firearms. I saw the protestors. Up to that point I had no idea there was even a gun shop in McLean (the old location was less than a block away and had been there for many years). After reading the WaPo article about the store, the bullying of the landlord, and the logical gymnastics the antis we’re going through to justify their abuse, I was irritated. So the next day I went to the store to meet the owners and show some support. I left with my first firearm purchase in over 20 years.
The owners were nice, professional, knowledgable, and most if all grateful for the support. They’d only been open a few hours and I was the 5th new customer brought in by the protestors. I’ve since been back for two more guns (a concealable semi automatic and a rifle), I’ve taken their concealed carry class (and followed up with more practical training at a local range) and applied for my concealed carry permit.
Thanks to the protestors and the politicians, there’s (at least) one more law-abiding gun owner in Virginia.
I did a search and they have a decent website. http://www.novafirearms.com
Will see it they have anything I “need”.
Democrats are conspiring to run every privately-owned business in America out of business. It’s called Marxism.
So how is this business right now? Are they still in business or are they going to be run out of this location too?
They’re doing just fine. Still working on renovations to the building, but they seem to have survived the storm.
Lawyers: Does the LGS owner have any sort of damage claim (punitive torts)?