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Headline Roundup January 20th, 2020

2nd Amendment Activists Rally Against Gun Control Legislation in Virginia

Summary from the AllSides News Team

A rally at the Virginia Capitol on Monday ended peacefully after an estimated 22,000 gun owners and gun rights activists demonstrated in protest of proposed state gun control legislation. Some reporting and voices focused on the peacefulness of the rally compared to the deadly Charlottesville incident in 2017; others focused on sightings of suspected white supremacists and members of other extremist sects at the rally. Some, particularly on the right, criticized the media for alleged fear-mongering leading up to the demonstration.

Featured Coverage of this Story

From the Right
No violence at Virginia pro-gun rally as fearmongering falls flat
No violence at Virginia pro-gun rally as fearmongering falls flat

Washington Examiner

Opinion

On Monday, tens of thousands of people descended on the state Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, to exercise the First Amendment in defense of their Second Amendment rights. But if all you’d done was follow liberal media reports and take cues from Democratic politicians, you would have expected this political protest, launched in response to Virginia Democrats' anti-gun legislative agenda, to end in violence and be made up of extremists.

Examples of hysterical media fearmongering abound.

News outlet Axios billed the protest as possibly “another Charlottesville.” As my colleague Timothy P....

Open on Washington Examiner
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From the Left
At tense Virginia rally, demonstrators reject extremists, defend law-abiding gun owners
News

RICHMOND, Va. ─ Thousands of gun-rights activists, banned from carrying their weapons out of fear of violence, crammed into the Virginia Capitol on Monday to urge state lawmakers to reject sweeping measures to limit the spread of firearms.

The rally, planned for weeks as part of a citizen-lobbying tradition held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, has focused national attention on Virginia's attempts to enact new gun regulations, pushed by Democrats who took control of the Statehouse for the first time in 26 years. Gun control supporters say they are...

Open on NBC News Digital
From the Left
Pro-gun rally by thousands in Virginia ends peacefully
News

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Tens of thousands of gun-rights activists from around the country rallied peacefully at the Virginia Capitol on Monday to protest plans by the state’s Democratic leadership to pass gun-control legislation — a move that has become a key flash point in the national debate over gun violence

The size of the crowd and the expected participation of white supremacists and fringe militia groups raised fears that the state could see a repeat of the violence that exploded in 2017 in Charlottesville. But the rally concluded uneventfully...

Open on Associated Press

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