Virginia Citizens Defense League.
Special note to item 7 below. Posted separately around here also. Its that important.
If you live in Virginia and believe in the 2A, you should belong. PM me for more info. Or go to a gun show and ask one of the folk at the recruiting table. The recruiting table will be there and not bore you. If you join and work the table a few hours you can get in to any show you recruit at free.
Below is a routine email updating on gun rights political activity in Va.
Go to VCDL.org and you can get your own to your email. Real easy to get off the list and your email addy is never sold, rented or used for anything other than direct info to you.
Anyway, read below. Full presentation and context is available at link below.
Nemo
https://vcdl.org/mpage/VCDLUpdate042622Virginia Citizens Defense League
Defending Your Right to Defend Yourself
1. Important information about calling 9-1-1!
2. VCDL working on issue with carry in State Forests
3. New VCDL ad! Spread far and wide!
4. Urgent Help Needed: Fredericksburg gun show THIS WEEKEND
5. Help Needed: Wytheville gun show THIS WEEKEND
6. Reminder: VCDL table at Louisa County charity bowling-pin shoot this Saturday
7. Important Fourth Circuit opinion on firearms!
8. VCDL website updated on each locality?s CHP fees
9. VCDL virtual membership meeting from last Thursday is available for viewing if you missed it
10. VCDL SW Virginia Spring ?pot-luck? picnic on May 14
11. Annual VCDL/RRRC Pistol Match is on June 11!
12. Why more minorities are buying guns
13. [FL] You have to love this FL sheriff and his advice on dealing with home invaders
14. More fake news on guns
15. Something fishy about a recent ?sniper? shooting in DC
16. Ammo cost will probably be affected: Russia seizes 130 million rounds of ammo bound for the U.S.
17. Salem gun show is now scheduled for May
1. Important information about calling 9-1-1!
I recently listed to a 9-1-1 call and noticed something odd. The call?s recording starts while the 9-1-1 phone was ringing, not when it was answered.
I thought that perhaps the recording was from the complainant?s phone or something like that and brushed it off.
Then I read an article that said that indeed many modern 9-1-1 systems start recording when the call is initiated, even before the call is answered!
So, and this is extremely important, when you hit the last ?1? in 9-1-1 or when you hit ?call? or ?send? on your cellphone, expect that you are being recorded IMMEDIATELY. Anything you say or someone else says during the time the 9-1-1 call is ringing is part of your 9-1-1 call recording.
2. VCDL working on issue with carry in State Forests
A member has brought up a problem with the signage at a new state forest in Charlotte County. The sign says ?Firearms are prohibited, except for hunting purposes.?
That is NOT correct.
When I checked the State Forest website, I saw this under rules: ?No explosives or explosive substances allowed in any forest, except lawful carrying of firearms and firearm ammunition where hunting is allowed.?
That, too, is NOT correct.
The regulation is simple and reads as follows:
4VAC10-30-170. Explosives, firearms, etc.
No person shall bring into or have in any forest any explosive or explosive substance. This regulation shall not apply to the lawful carrying of firearms and firearms ammunition.
No mention at all of hunting. I know because it was VCDL that got this regulation changed in 2006 to remove the hunting requirement!
I contacted a Mr. Kyner at the Department of Forestry on this. He was very polite and acknowledged the problem when he saw what I emailed him. He said he will get this information to the appropriate people and will get back to me. When he does, I will update all of you. This should be a slam dunk, as the regulation is very clear as to its intentions.
3. New VCDL ad! Spread far and wide!
We need to change the state agency laws back to the way they were. That's going to require all Virginia gun owners to vote in every election and have pro-gun candidates run in races that have no pro-gun champion. Support the VCDL and the VCDL-PAC. Share this video!
https://youtu.be/dKd_whTT7QY
4. Urgent Help Needed: Fredericksburg gun show THIS WEEKEND
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED for the Fredericksburg SGK Gun Show Saturday, April 30th:
Fredericksburg Expo & Conference Center
2371 Carl D Silver Parkway
Fredericksburg, VA 22401
If you are a VCDL member who has worked at a gun show before or want to be involved for the very first time, VCDL needs your help to protect, preserve, and strengthen our gun rights in the Commonwealth.
VCDL Volunteers have free admission to the show and many vendors offer discounts to VCDL Volunteers. Parking is free.
Three (3) positions are available for Saturdays morning shift
Saturday, April 30th
? AM shift: 9am - 1pm
Contact Jamie Brannan (gunshows.fredericksburg@vcdl.org).
5. Help Needed: Wytheville gun show THIS WEEKEND
Wytheville Gun Show & Flea Market; April 30 ? May 1
200 Apex Center
Wytheville, VA 24382
(directly off of I-81 at exit 77)
VCDL is still in need of member helpers for this event.
Shifts needing assistance:
Saturday 8 am--12:30 pm --two openings
Saturday 12:30 pm--5 pm --four openings
Sunday 9 am--1 pm --four openings
Sunday 1 pm--4 pm -- three openings
Sign up to assist now: al@vcdl.org
6. Reminder: VCDL table at Louisa County charity bowling-pin shoot this Saturday
EM Brandy Polanowski will be running the VCDL table at a bowling pin match at Louisa on Saturday, April 30, 2022.
The host, Todd Freeman, wrote, ?We will be holding the next Bowling Pin Shoot on Saturday April 30, 2022 with the Shooters Meeting beginning at 9:00 AM and the shooting beginning at 10:00 AM. As always there will be giveaways and free food: hot dogs, chili, baked beans, chips, assorted salads and cookies.?
He forgot ?and tons of fun!? Three of these shoots are done a year and I try to make all of them if I can.
The shoot is open to the public and the money will benefit a charity (this time Kena?s Patriot Shrine Club).
Location:
Todd Freeman?s home
5672 Bibb Store Road
Louisa, VA 23093
Notes:
Bring eye and ear protection
All handguns are welcome
Bring guns in zippered bags or secured holsters
Bring lots of money and ammo
Each round is $5 and you will be competing against five other shooters. Winner of the round (shoots all five bowling pins off their table the quickest) gets $10 or bragging rights. Ties are broken using a Texas Star steel target
Money spent at shoot is NOT tax deductible
Pistol caliber carbine are in a separate class
Pistols with optics have a separate class
7. Important Fourth Circuit opinion on firearms!
This opinion applies to Virginia, as we are in the Federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals jurisdiction.
Bottom line:
The mere possession of a firearm by a homeowner is not sufficient to justify the use of deadly force by officers.
There is a RIGHT to come to the door with a firearm (including chambering a round as you approach the door).
Officers must identify themselves as officers to gain qualified immunity.
Mere verbal announcement, without visual confirmation, is NOT sufficient to gain qualified immunity.
Sufficient precedent exists for officers to be aware of their duty in these situations.
* https://www.ammoland.com/2022/04/fourth-circuit-a-person-has-a-right-to-come-to-the-door-with-a-firearm/
* https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/202243.P.pdf
8. VCDL website updated on each locality?s CHP fees
Thanks to EMs Tess Ailshire and Leyla Myers for updating the CHP fee chart:
https://vcdl.org/page/chp-fees-per-jurisdiction
9. VCDL virtual membership meeting from last Thursday is available for viewing if you missed it
Did you miss the VCDL Live monthly meeting with special guest Tom Perroni? Tom is a Tactical SWAT Medic and active Deputy Sheriff that spoke about stopping bleeding of a traumatic injury like a gunshot.
https://youtu.be/H7744uUwpts
10. VCDL SW Virginia Spring ?pot-luck? picnic on May 14
The SW Virginia VCDL Spring "Pot-Luck Picnic" will be held on MAY 14, 2022 at 11 AM at:
Shelter #4
Longwood Park
611 E Main St.
Salem, VA 24153-4311
The picnic is open to ALL VCDL members, families and guests. We ask for an RSVP so we can get enough supplies.
Bring your favorite dish to share with others.
RSVP to al@vcdl.org
11. Annual VCDL/RRRC Pistol Match is on June 11!
The VCDL/Roanoke Rifle and Revolver Club Pistol Match is on schedule for Saturday, June 11, at:
Roanoke Rifle and Revolver Club
305 Gun Club Dr.
Hardy, VA 24101
We need SPONSORS to provide PRIZES for this very important event! Contact al@vcdl.org for donations or suggestions.
Plan on attending and competing in this fun annual event! More details shortly.
12. Why more minorities are buying guns
Yet more bad news for the gun controllers:
https://www.axios.com/guns-firearms-people-of-color-7f2ef104-35cd-4e9e-902e-c910958454f9.html
13. [FL] You have to love this FL sheriff and his advice on dealing with home invaders
The sheriff suggests getting training so if you have to shoot a home invader you don?t miss. That way the State saves taxpayers money, as the State won?t have the expense of keeping the criminal in prison.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-sheriff-promotes-gun-safety-course-residents-shoot-home-invaders
14. More fake news on guns
EM Leyla Myers send me this:
According to the article, ??this is the first time that firearm injuries have surpassed motor vehicle crashes among kids.?
Hmm, maybe that was because in 2020 kids and everyone else were told to stay home, thereby reducing vehicular traffic in general at an unprecedented rate? And maybe some who were forced to stay home and were secluded from normal human interaction got depressed? Key points missed by the article!
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/in-a-first-firearms-were-leading-cause-of-death-for-us-children-teens-in-2020/3657888/
15. Something fishy about a recent ?sniper? shooting in DC
A sniper shooting from an apartment building attempted to do some mass murdering at a school in DC. He wounded four people and killed himself before police could get to him.
The sniper had no known connection to the school. The police are mystified as to how he could pay for the apartments he was leasing and the expensive guns he had in both apartments, which include three machine guns according to police!
He had an apartment in Virginia and one in DC.
He chose to do his killing in DC. Interesting timing and location, considering that the Supreme Court is in DC and will be considering some important gun laws very shortly now.
Kind of like the massacre in Las Vegas that happened just before Congress was going to consider some gun legislation to require states to honor each other?s CHPs and to take suppressors off the NFA list. Like the Las Vegas sniper, the DC sniper set up a camera to monitor the hallway leading to his room for approaching police.
I?m trying not to be a conspiracy theorist, but this situations seems awfully suspicious to me. Could someone have wanted another ?massacre? to derail possible positive movement on gun rights? I, for one, cannot say ?no.?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/04/25/bowser-dc-shooting-school-vanness/
School was in sniper?s ?crosshairs,? but link is unclear, D.C. chief says
By Peter Hermann
and
Julie Zauzmer Weil
D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III said the sniper who sprayed bullets across the Van Ness neighborhood in Northwest Washington on Friday had his sights on a nearby private school, firing more than 200 bullets out his apartment window, with about 800 unspent rounds in his residence.
?The school was certainly in his crosshairs,? Contee said, referring to the shooter as a ?lone-wolf sniper.?
Raymond Spencer had six firearms in the apartment on Van Ness Street, including three fully automatic rifles, the chief said at a news conference Monday. He said police found thousands more rounds of ammunition inside another residence in Fairfax County, Va., and parts to assemble three additional firearms.
Authorities said they have not learned of any connection Spencer had to the Edmund Burke School or a motive for the shooting that wounded four people ? including a 12-year-old, two women in vehicles and a school security guard who is a retired D.C. police officer.
Two of the victims remained hospitalized in critical condition Monday.
Contee and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) provided a chilling update to Friday afternoon?s attack that terrorized a stretch of busy Connecticut Avenue from Van Ness to Woodley Park and plunged residences and schools along with Edmund Burke into lockdown for hours.
Authorities also revealed that Spencer had set up a camera in the hallway outside his apartment door at the AVA Van Ness, apparently to see whether police were coming. Spencer, 23, had also purchased two frozen dinners at a nearby Giant Food five hours before the rampage.
Police described his fifth-floor apartment as a ?sniper?s nest,? with a view of a glass-enclosed bridge that links two school buildings at Edmund Burke and where parents line up in cars to pick up children at dismissal. He had turned the apartment bathroom into a makeshift command center, with a laptop computer, a cellphone, a rifle and a pillow in the tub.
Police also said they learned new details about Spencer, who they said fatally shot himself in that bathroom as police breached his door about 5? hours after he opened fire around 3:20 p.m. He had attended Wheaton High School in Montgomery County, had been a lifeguard and had briefly served in the U.S. Coast Guard in 2017, police said.
In a statement Tuesday, the Coast Guard said Spencer began basic training as a recruit in 2017, ?but did not graduate and never served at a Coast Guard unit.?
But other parts of Spencer?s life remain a troubling mystery to law enforcement, including how he paid for the apartments he leased in the District starting in January and in the Fair Lakes area of Fairfax County starting in February 2021, and how he afforded his expensive arsenal.
But even more critically, police said they do not know why he apparently indiscriminately fired toward the school.
?Everybody wants to know,? Contee said, adding, ?And we want to be able to provide those answers.?
Bowser billed Monday?s news conference as a discussion of public safety in the District, and announced the creation of a new Violent Crime Impact Team, in which local authorities will partner with federal law enforcement agencies to target violence in specific areas where shootings are most prevalent.
Contee noted that on Friday and Saturday, police responded to a total of 10 shooting incidents with 15 victims, including a shooting of a man in a wheelchair and the shootings of three people in Brightwood Park. Both attacks occurred as police were in the midst of tracking down the sniper, evacuating buildings and securing the area around Van Ness.
Also over that 48-hour period, a construction worker directing traffic was shot by a person on a ride-share bicycle who was upset with delays, and a man was fatally shot and stabbed during an argument at a birthday party. On Monday, as the mayor?s briefing was wrapping up, a person was fatally shot in Northeast Washington.
Police said they have seized 969 illegal guns in the District this year, a 50 percent increase from this point in 2021.
Contee has frequently said that people react to crime differently depending on their ?proximity to the pain.? Of the crime experienced over the past three days, the chief said, ?This should be painful to all of us.?
Homicides, which have trended upward in the District for the past four years, are down 10 percent year-to-date. But violent crime is up 26 percent, driven by a spike in robberies and carjackings. A recent poll by The Washington Post found that 3 in 10 District residents do not feel safe in their neighborhoods.
The crime concerns come as Bowser seeks reelection to a third term and as a June 21 primary is approaching. Public safety and the Van Ness shooting were key topics of debate the day after the sniper attack at a candidates forum, where Bowser came under criticism from opponents.
On Monday, the mayor said gun violence affects not only victims but also ?people who live in communities where they are fearful, where they witness crimes, where they hear gunshots, or where they can?t enjoy the peace and tranquility of their own homes.?
Officials at the news conference also displayed piles of firearms that police had recently seized in the District, with Bowser saying she wanted to ?display some of the firepower that [police are] up against on our streets.? Some of those weapons were from Spencer?s apartment.
Authorities said they are meticulously collecting and documenting evidence, and as of Monday were still at Spencer?s apartment processing the crime scene. Meanwhile, police are starting to build out a rough timeline of events around the shooting.
Contee said Spencer moved into the AVA Van Ness apartment in January, filling out his lease agreement online. The chief said investigators are trying to determine how the young man could afford two residences, and ?how he?s paying his bills and keeping the lights on.?
Other tenants have said they encountered Spencer infrequently.
Police officials said they believed that in the days leading up to the shooting Spencer had searched Wikipedia pages on the recent attack in the New York City subway and a school shooting in Florida.
The night before the attack, Contee said, surveillance video shows Spencer wheeling a suitcase into the building, and officials have previously described his apartment as sparsely furnished, with a mattress on the floor.
Law enforcement officials with knowledge of the investigation have said authorities are examining Internet posts that might be by Spencer, particularly on the 4chan platform, where a user going by ?Raymond Spencer? wrote ?Dear God please forgive me? at 3:24 p.m., shortly after the shooting began.
The user posted another message at 3:30 p.m., which Contee said appeared to be directed at police: ?They?re in the wrong part of the building right now searching XD.?
A final message was posted on 4chan at 3:36 p.m.: ?Waiting for police to catch up with me.?
Separately, the Edmund Burke School Wikipedia page was revised online Friday to read, ?A basedman shot at the school on April 22, 2022. The suspect is still at large,? according to the Wikipedia page?s history, which showed a change shortly after 4 p.m. made by a user going by ?Raymond Spencer.? Shortly after, the user replaced ?basedman? with ?gunman? and added ?(Hope they catch him soon!)? next to the edit, according to the Wikipedia page?s history.
It was unclear how Spencer either obtained three fully automatic rifles or modified the rifles to fire continuously with a single squeeze of the trigger. Contee said Spencer?s firearms were not equipped with a ?giggle switch? or ?auto sear,? components used to convert some guns into fully automatic weapons. They are illegal but accessible on the Internet and relatively easy to install.
So far, law enforcement officials have been frustrated in their efforts to establish a motive in the shooting. Contee said investigators are talking with Spencer?s family, who have not spoken publicly about the case, and he urged anyone who has interacted with Spencer to contact authorities.
Police officials have noted that Spencer did not appear to try to hide his digital footprint, and used his real name on many of his posts. But it also appears he left behind few clues about his motive.
?We?re trying to really put the pieces together,? Contee said.
16. Ammo cost will probably be affected: Russia seizes 130 million rounds of ammo bound for the U.S.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WfTWJG4Acuw
17. Salem gun show is now scheduled for May
The Salem gun show is now scheduled for May 21-22. More information, later.
