One of the rights the National Rifle Association has boosted in the last decade is the notion that individual gun ownership cannot be limited because gun owners may at some point have a patriotic duty to murder U.S. political figures whom they deem to be tyrants. The definition of "tyrant" is, in their view, gratifyingly simple: someone who tries to restrict gun ownership in any way, shape, or form.
This advocacy continues to have real-world effects, as it did last week when an idiot showed up outside a Virginia lawmaker's house armed with both a handgun and a shotgun, a move intended, he said, to be a "peaceful" protest against the Virginia House's new tightening of gun laws, but which seemed anything but peaceful in actual intent.
As reported by Newsweek, the chairman(!) of a Republican Party group in the city of Hopewell, Virginia, and a gun rights group founder, Brandon Howard, held his armed "protest" outside the house of Democratic state Del. Mark Levine, a sponsor of a bill in the House of Delegates that would have banned assault weapons. In a Facebook video, Howard spelled out his intent: "We're going to tell Mark Levine, we know where you live. And armed citizens of the commonwealth are going to come to your house. To your doorstep."
There's no question that telling another human being We know where you live and will be coming armed to your house is intended as a threat. It is obviously a threatening statement. It's also a statement that fits snugly in the rhetoric of the far-right violent militia movement, dedicated to arming and "training" themselves to topple the U.S. government if that government does whatever something each group believes is the final straw requiring such action. It is a statement very much akin to the NRA's own pronouncements. It is a statement very much at home in, yes, the Republican Party, in which this seemingly not-entirely-hinged fellow holds a local chairmanship.
Other portions of Howard's video, as quoted by CBS affiliate WUSA, made the threat more explicit: "I hope you kiss your wife, I hope you kiss your husband, I hope you kiss your children goodbye before you come and try to take mine, because that's the last time you will ever kiss them in your life, because you're only getting my gun, one way, and that's with the business end."
As is typical for, how shall we put it, men who tend to wander around in public waving their guns, Howard's explanations for his acts do not paint a picture of a man with all his beans still in the can. Howard told WUSA that if his target felt "intimidated," then "he just admitted to being a tyrant, because only a tyrant would be intimidated and threatened."
Whether Howard ever intends to carry through on his violent threats is unknown, but—again—the whole basis for NRA-styled opposition to gun safety laws is that individuals like Howard have a right both to threaten political opponents and, if need be, to murder them, so it does not appear that Howard's performance violated any laws. If you want to show up outside someone's house with a loaded gun in Virginia to prove you "know where they live," this is evidently What America Should Be Like.
The Democratic lawmaker targeted says he intends to examine whether a new law needs to be written to change that. This, too, will no doubt send the Hopewell Republican chairman into another armed tizzy.