Virginia gun owners and their allies have shown the rest of 2A Nation how to engage in ambush political warfare against the tyrannical impulses of Mini-Mike Bloomberg, a man who has pledged his personal fortune to strip Second Amendment rights from all Americans.
The scene was a Northern Virginia college campus this week, where Fox News provided the New York gun-control extremist with a town hall format to spew his nonsense on firearm restrictions, and on other topics.
There to provide pushback were the members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League—with an assist from my group, the Patriot Picket.
With more than 25,000 paid members, the VCDL has demonstrated to a national audience that it is one of the most politically astute gun rights organizations working at the state level. Their ability to turn out its activists on the ground, as well as on social media is legendary.
Anyone who saw coverage of Virginia’s “Lobby Day” rally attended by more than 25,000 armed patriots in late January has seen “VCDL power” at work.
At the town hall venue this week where Bloomberg hoped for a national media cakewalk, the VCDL played the inside game and outside game expertly, pressuring Bloomberg to resort to half-truths and outright fabrications about federal gun laws on the 60 minute live broadcast.
And while Fox News hosts Brett Baier and Martha McCallum had hoped to preside over a smooth and civilized blabfest, the VCDL was not playing along.
At one point, a VCDL activist leaped to his feet, out-of-turn, to challenge Bloomberg on his gun control mania—a disruption that prompted the Fox hosts to hastily throw their town hall coverage to a commercial break.
More about that in a moment. First, though, it’s worth noting that the VCDL laid the groundwork for Bloomberg pushback and disruption days in advance. Using VCDL “Action Alert” messaging, members were encouraged to snag tickets to the Fox News town hall.
They succeeded, and a significant number of VCDL regulars occupied seats for the show.
The “Alert” messaging also put out the call for 2A advocates to stage a sidewalk demonstration in front of the town hall venue before the broadcast got underway.
With help from my Patriot Picket team, the VCDL arranged for a gauntlet of gun rights sloganeering that bombarded all arriving Bloomberg minions and media members with freedom messages as they cued up for the event’s security screening.
Once inside, VCDL activists took seats while proudly displaying the now-famous orange “Guns Save Lives” stickers. Others attendees removed their coats to reveal orange “Guns Save Lives” shirts.
Before the live national broadcast even got underway, the GSL messaging was a shot across the Bloomberg bow—putting the little tyrant on defense from the get-go.
Incidentally, the right to wear the orange GSL stickers and shirts in the gallery came only after the VCDL folks fought for it.
It wasn’t clear whether it was a Fox News demand or a tantrum thrown by the Bloomberg minions on hand, but the VCDL prevailed in a pre-show debate over whether the stickers and shirts represented “political campaigning” from the audience. The VCDL people stood their ground and won the argument.
Their stickers and shirts qualified as attire protected by the First Amendment—a stand for freedom that would soon pay enormous dividends just as the town hall went “live” on the Fox network.
It should be noted that one of the great ironies of this spectacle of Michael Bloomberg hectoring a national audience about his wish to gut the Second Amendment was the choice of the venue itself. George Mason University, named after one of America’s greatest liberty-loving patriots.
When it came time to go live, the VCDL’s maneuvers paid off.
As the Fox camera framed up the very first Virginia citizen with a question for candidate Bloomberg, a “Guns Save Lives” shirt worn by a VCDL activist occupied most the frame.
And as the broadcast rolled along, the GSL stickers and shirts were visible in just about every audience cutaway for the rest of the broadcast.
Then came the moment near the end of the town hall, when the microphone was passed to Barstow, Virginia’s Clarke Chitty. Squaring up to Bloomberg, Chitty confronted the gun-grabbing billionaire with perhaps the greatest hypocrisy of the 2020 Democrat political season:
“How do you justify pushing for more gun control when you have an armed security detail that is likely equipped with the same firearms and magazines that you seek to ban the common citizen from owning? Does your life matter more than mine, or my family’s, or these people’s?“
The audience erupted into wild applause—applause that Bloomberg attempted to quiet with a sputtering start to his answer that betrayed his embarrassment at being shamed.
Bloomberg’s response, though, was a cowardly effort to detour away from a direct answer to Clarke Chitty’s question.
Instead, the words of this Republican-turned-Independent-
Below, you can watch Bloomberg’s 3-minute snobbish, elitist self-justification of “guns for me, but not for thee”, but here’s a handy summary:
“I am entitled to self defense because I am more important than you.”
Specifically, the part of Bloomberg’s non-answer that got the audience the most restive was the idiotic assertion that background checks don’t apply to internet sales or gun shows. As someone who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars challenging American gun rights, you would suspect Bloomberg would understand federal gun law by now.
Instead, it was astonishing to hear Bloomberg’s fairy tale.
“The law does not apply to guns sold sold over the internet or in gun shows…why? Because those two things came after the law that applies to gun stores was passed, OK? And what I have tried to do is just get every state—because the federal government doesn’t seem to want to do it—to just check before they sell a gun to anybody to make sure they are not in one of those categories where people—I think most people would agree—should not have guns.”
Bloomberg had hardly finished when voices in the audience began yelling out comments in a manner not seen during the town hall’s previous 45 minutes.
One VCDL gun rights advocate who wasn’t ready to let Bloomberg’s falsehood stand rose to his feet to challenge Bloomberg on his falsehoods, and on his notion that self-defense was available by writing checks for armed guards.
His name: Thomas Speciale. He is not just any VCDL member.
He happens to be a contender for the 2020 Virginia Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Speciale apologized to the Fox hosts for speaking out-of-turn, but he pressed on and shouted his question at Bloomberg.
“Are those liberties available to the people of New York?”
The answer never came as Speciale’s disruption kicked off more protests from the audience to such an extent that Fox’s Bret Baier felt compelled to call for a commercial break.
Below is the video clip where Virginians refused to give Bloomberg a pass when he misrepresented the facts and distort the truth.
Question: “How do you justify pushing for more gun control when you have an armed security detail that’s likely equipped with the same firearms and magazines that you seek to ban the common citizen from owning?”
Bloomberg: I’m more important than you. pic.twitter.com/ywszQHcLoy
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) March 3, 2020
Thanks to the courage of gun rights advocates whose confrontation created the 2A pushback “highlight reel” above, those watching live and those watching via social media links can see just how dishonest Mini-Mike Bloomberg is about his claim that he is not threatening the 2nd Amendment.
Cam Edwards, a Virginian, nationally known gun rights advocate and blogger, was one of those Fox viewers who was incensed to hear that Bloomberg justified his use of an armed security team as something that only wealthy elitists politicians deserve.
Appearing as a call-in guest on WMAL-FM in the nation’s capitol, Edwards shredded Bloomberg’s notion that other Americans were welcome to protect themselves as long as they hire retired cops at great expense, as Bloomberg has.
“Here is what Mike Bloomberg does not understand, which is that 18 million American conceal carry holders—we pay for our own security, too. We just can’t afford to outsource it to a private army of former cops. This was a very revealing moment for Mike Bloomberg. His arrogance and elitism were on full display and I hope Americans were watching.”
They clearly were. Despite the millions of Bloomberg dollars poured into Virginia Democrats’ coffers, a money dump that gave Democrats control at the statehouse this year, it’s clear the Bloomberg bribes did not pan out for the paymaster.
For it was only 24 hours after Bloomberg tried to talk up his infringement schemes at a university named after one of America’s greatest patriots that Virginia Democrats went to the polls and gave Joe Biden the win in the Super Tuesday voting. Bloomberg did…poorly.
And now news comes today that the anti-gun authoritarian has called an end to his fantastically expensive, fabulously unproductive campaign.
If we had anything at all to do with that outcome, it was all worthwhile.
Jeff Hulbert is the founder of Patriot Picket.