Good coverage of VCDL vs Sheriff Jett in Freelance Star

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VA-ALERT: Good coverage of VCDL vs Sheriff Jett in Freelance Star

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1. Freelance-Star brings Sheriff Jett’s gun ban front and center
2. Interview on open carry march in Richmond


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1. Freelance-Star brings Sheriff Jett’s gun ban front and center
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I was interviewed extensively by Freelance-Star reporter Vanessa Remmers last week. The phone interview lasted around an hour and was very detailed. The result was a very well done, front page article that came out over the weekend.

This might be a good opportunity for those of you who like to write Letters to the Editor to let your voices be heard at the Freelance-Star.

Here’s the article:

From news.fredericksburg.com: http://tinyurl.com/mwmak5b

Gun rights group upset with Stafford sheriff
BY VANESSA REMMERS / THE FREE LANCE–STAR

A gun rights group wants a public apology from the Stafford County sheriff because it believes gun owners’ rights were subverted at a crime prevention event in August. But the Sheriff’s Office stands by the event’s restriction on the open carry of firearms.

The Newington-based Virginia Citizens Defense League, which describes itself as a Second Amendment preservation group, lost approval for a booth at a recent National Night Out event in Stafford because the group wanted to openly carry their guns.

Target had honored Sheriff Charles Jett’s request to prohibit the open carry of firearms at National Night Out, a community awareness event that drew thousands to the parking lot of the Stafford Marketplace Target on Aug. 5.

“The Sheriff’s Office was committed to helping to ensure that National Night Out was family fun event for the citizens of Stafford County. To that end, guidelines were established to prevent any one group from possibly creating a distraction for the people attending. That included political groups, activists or the request of one group to open carry their hand guns,” Jett said Friday. [PVC: A “distraction” from what? The array of paramilitary equipment the Sheriff had on display at the event wasn’t a distraction? LOL! Perhaps that was what the Sheriff didn’t want people to be distracted away from.]

Jared Barsanti, the manager of the Stafford Marketplace Target, said that the company’s firearm policy hasn’t changed and still allows, but discourages, patrons to carry firearms on Target property. But, Barsanti said, National Night Out was an event held by local law enforcement and Target deferred to them for that event.

VCDL is now rallying its members to let Jett know that “pushing Target to both prohibit the lawful carry of handguns and to deny VCDL a booth at National Night Out is unacceptable,” a VCDL email to members reads.

“The Sheriff has no authority to ban guns on private property. So to get around that legal problem, Jett had to pressure Target to create a gun ban on their property so the Sheriff could hide behind them to enforce his own bigotry against gun owners through trespass laws,” the same Sept. 30 email continued.

In an email exchange in late June, Jett told some staff members that he wished to restrict the use of guns to law enforcement officers only, and that his staff would have to get Target on board with that. Jett was responding to an email asking if his office was going to allow the open carry of firearms to a participating group this year. The email ended by saying that some parents were unhappy last year.

Those emails were provided by VCDL, who obtained them through a Freedom Of Information Act request.

“The frustrating part from my angle is that the sheriff shouldn’t be in this mode of ‘How can I disarm the public?’ And looking how to get this done. That’s not what the sheriff’s department is about. I’m really shocked that a sheriff would do this in Virginia,” Philip Van Cleave, VCDL president, said in a telephone interview.

The VCDL was initially offered a booth from the Sheriff’s Office and the ability to hand out information as long as group members didn’t openly carry firearms. But that invitation was rescinded when the group wouldn’t agree to the open-carry restriction.

Van Cleave then turned to Target and said he received verbal approval from a Target employee to openly carry firearms at the event, as long as the group didn’t leave their booth to hand out literature. Hours before National Night Out on Aug. 5, Van Cleave said he got a call from that same Target employee saying that the whole deal was off.

The Target employee Van Cleave said he talked to is no longer employed at Target, but that employee’s leave has nothing to do with National Night Out, Barsanti said.

VCDL members ended up attending the event with “Guns Save Lives” stickers on their clothes, but Van Cleave said they weren’t allowed to hand out stickers to the many people who approached them because they didn’t have a booth. Van Cleave said he didn’t see any of his members openly carrying firearms.

Sheriff’s Office spokesman Bill Kennedy, however, said that some VCDL members did show up to the event openly carrying firearms, and those VCDL members weren’t asked to leave or cited for trespassing because Target didn’t request it.

VCDL was planning to launch a boycott campaign against the store until Van Cleave realized the restriction was the sheriff’s idea. Van Cleave says the group isn’t currently seeking legal action against the sheriff.


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2. Interview on open carry march in Richmond
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I was also interviewed about a small open-carry-of-long-guns march near some housing projects here in Richmond over the weekend. VCDL did not participate in the march, but the reporter wanted to get comments from another gun organization. My interview is in the second video near the bottom.

VCDL supports all lawful carry of firearms. For long guns, questions of practicality and logistics come to mind when doing so during normal daily routines. For an event like a march, where everyone is standing up and/or walking, practicality and logistics are not really issues.

NOTE: Long guns cannot be carried loaded in all localities in Virginia, depending on local hunting laws. In larger cities and counties, loaded firearms cannot have a magazine in them that will hold MORE than 20 rounds, unless you have a CHP.

From wtvr.com: http://tinyurl.com/nxm5p5a






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dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to
Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right.

VCDL web page: http://www.vcdl.org [http://www.vcdl.org/]