Monday’s Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Virginia, drew thousands of citizens from around the state and the country, and, despite breathless predictions of violence by the national media, it was a peaceful affair.

“Lobby Day” is an annual event in Virginia sponsored by the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) so that people may gather at the state capitol to register their support for the Second Amendment. In previous years, the event has always gone without a hitch, but this year’s rally took on special significance.

Democrats passed a series of restrictive gun laws that were specifically designed to roll back Virginians’ Second Amendment rights. Once they took control of the state assembly and senate in November’s elections, they immediately set about to infringe upon the Second Amendment.

One bill gives municipal governments the power to prohibit the possession of firearms and ammunition in public spaces, and another prohibits private citizens from purchasing more than one firearm in a 30-day period. These two bills cleared the state senate by party-line vote. A third bill that mandates stricter background checks received the support of two Republicans.

Gov. Ralph “Blackface” Northam crowed his support for the legislation, which immediately met opposition from across the state. Nearly 90% of the state’s 95 counties have already stated they will not enforce the new laws, declaring themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries. Some Virginia Democrats issued veiled threats to those who opposed their gun grab, and the situation quickly grew tense.

In advance of the rally, Northam issued a “state of emergency,” claiming to have intelligence that white supremacists were planning to crash the rally and stir up violence. He also issued a temporary ban on carrying firearms on capitol grounds during the rally. The VCDL filed a lawsuit to overturn the ban, but its request was summarily dismissed by the Richmond Circuit Court with the flimsy excuse that VCDL could not prove it was being harmed by the injunction. The Virginia Supreme Court upheld the decision.

The media did extra work to carry Northam’s anti-gun message, filling the airwaves with stories that predicted “another Charlottesville” because the protesters were racists who would inevitably become violent. NBC posted a story quoting several people who feared that the rally was going to be violent. Vowing to stay away, or close their businesses for the day, these folks were the perfect sounding board for the anti-gun crowd. CNN, CBS News, and the Associated Press also did their part to smear the event’s attendees.

Northam did everything he could to stymie people’s efforts to attend the rally. Road closures and funneling people through a single checkpoint ensured long waits to reach the capitol, and the state police warned people of hours-long security lines.

None of it stopped more than 22,000 people from attending and remaining entirely peaceful. As Mark Alexander described it, “More than 20 thousand citizens gathered at the capitol, many heavily armed as is their inherent right, and despite all the Leftist predictions, not a single shot was fired. I call that ‘a well regulated militia’!”

Of course, Northam claimed credit, saying his security efforts “successfully de-escalated what could have been a volatile situation.” How pathetic.

There probably won’t be many stories about how well the rally went since that doesn’t fit the Leftmedia’s anti-Second Amendment narrative. But that doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of legal firearms owners are law-abiding citizens, and they are a heterogeneous group that transcends race, ethnicity, and demographics. And that may be what terrifies leftists the most.

#NEW MONTAGE from me showing how @CNN and @MSNBC spent their mornings hyping fears that “white nationalists” and “extremists” would cause “violence” at #VirginiaRally for the #2A like in 2017 at Charlottesville #LobbyDay2020 pic.twitter.com/wR91mMPfmR

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 20, 2020

“Sir, are you a White Supremacist?” pic.twitter.com/JFhxLRfgv1

— Zach Vorhies (@Perpetualmaniac) January 20, 2020