This week’s Second Amendment rally in Richmond, Virginia, was a big disappointment … but not for those in attendance. More than 20,000 protesters marched peacefully in Virginia’s capital city in support of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

But for members of the Leftmedia, many of whom characterized the event as an uprising of violent white nationalists, the day was a stark reminder that they just don’t understand this country or its people.

Satya Marar attended the gun rally, and he writes at the Washington Examiner, “While white men certainly seemed to be the majority of protesters, many other kinds of people turned up to voice their concerns about gun control as well, such as women, blacks, and members of the gay community who see their basic right to self-defense as at risk.”

Of course, we’re unlikely to see this sort of balanced and accurate reporting in The Washington Post or The New York Times. Thus, some Americans might be surprised that the issue of gun rights would bring together such disparate groups. But the fact that folks from across the political spectrum were united for a common cause reveals the importance of the right to self-defense, not to mention the reason why progressives are so eager to confiscate guns from millions of peaceful, law-abiding citizens.

Maybe that’s why Beltway Democrats and leftists across the country have declared war on the National Rifle Association: They know that gun rights are the guarantor of all other rights and are thus the ultimate check against statism and tyranny.

While the media wants Americans to think all card-carrying members of the NRA are rural white supremacists, the organization’s history proves otherwise.

“The NRA has historically opposed laws that were virtually tailor made to deny African-Americans the right to keep and bear arms,” says gun writer Sam Jacobs. “Many gun control laws to this day stem from the KKK’s fear of armed and independent minorities. The Rosewood Massacre in 1923 — a bloodbath led by a white mob that resulted in the destruction of an entire black community in Florida — was a clear example of how an armed black people could prevent future KKK raids.”

There are countless examples, going back three centuries, of black Americans fighting against those who would oppress them. But like the slave owners of the 19th century, today’s Democrat politicians would prefer that blacks remain unarmed and subservient to those in power.

“Forcibly disarming blacks in the South was among the early Ku Klux Klan’s reasons for organizing and one of its first goals,” David S. D'Amato writes at The Hill. “They knew what today’s well-meaning advocates of gun control do not — that the black letter of the law is one thing and de facto power relations are quite another. These gun control laws were passed to disarm black citizens. We might do well to keep this history in mind today when we consider how new, more restrictive gun laws will be applied.”

Not coincidentally, our nation’s strictest gun-control laws tend to be in its most crime-ridden cities — cities whose inhabitants are largely non-white. Millions of inner-city blacks live in fear while being denied the right to protect themselves by the very Democrats they continually elect to office.

Maybe that’s why so many blacks are now taking up arms.

“In 2015,” writes Harvard history professor Tiya Miles in The New York Times, “Philip Smith founded the National African-American Gun Association in Georgia. His members, he said, are predominantly first-time gun owners and educated professionals.” She adds that today’s NAAGA has 75 chapters in 30 states, and Smith expects them to be “in every state within a year.”

In the end, this week’s Virginia rally might be a turning point in the perception that many Americans have of gun owners. While Democrats and the media (but we repeat ourselves) have been hell-bent on dividing people, Americans from all walks of life put politics aside and came together without a single shot being fired.