Virginia on edge as pro-gun rally looms

Virginia’s highest court has upheld a ban on firearms at an upcoming pro-gun rally in the state’s capital, an event that authorities feared could erupt in violence at the hands of armed extremists.

The Virginia Supreme Court’s decision yesterday came a day after gun rights groups sued to overturn the ban that Governor Ralph Northam issued earlier this week, citing what he called credible threats of ‘‘armed militia groups storming our capitol’’.

The lawsuit and court rulings came as the FBI arrested six men whom authorities linked to a white supremacist group known as The Base.

At least three of them were planning to attend the pro-gun rally on Tuesday on the grounds of the state capitol in Richmond, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Virginia has become Ground Zero in the raging debate in the US over gun control. A new Democratic majority in the state legislature has promised to pass an array of restrictions, including universal background checks and a red-flag law.

Gun rights groups argued that Northam’s ban would violate their Second Amendment right to bear arms and their First Amendment freedom of speech under the US Constitution. But a Richmond judge upheld the ban on Friday, citing rulings from the US Supreme Court and other courts that the Second Amendment is not unlimited.

The state Supreme Court did not say whether it agreed with the lower court’s assessment. In a terse two-page ruling, the court said it did not have enough information ‘‘to discern whether the circuit court abused its discretion’’ in rejecting the gun rights groups’ request to lift the ban.

Northam praised the ruling, saying that keeping the ban in place would ‘‘help to ensure the safety of all Virginians’’ during the rally on a day which is also a federal holiday honouring Martin Luther King Jr.

Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defence League, the group sponsoring the rally, called the Richmond judge’s ruling ‘‘mindboggling’’. The group did not respond immediately to the Supreme Court ruling.

US President Donald Trump jumped into the fray yesterday, tweeting that the Second Amendment ‘‘is under very serious attack in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia. That’s what happens when you vote for Democrats, they will take your guns away’’.

In his legal brief to the high court, Herring called Northam’s ban ‘‘a carefully limited executive order’’ that ‘‘does not prevent anyone from speaking, assembling, or petitioning the government’’.

‘‘Instead, it temporarily precludes private possession of firearms in a sensitive public place during a specified time to protect public safety.’’

Herring argued that Northam’s order would help to prevent the kind of violence that erupted at a 2017 white nationalist rally in the Virginia city of Charlottesville, when a woman was killed and more than 30 others hurt when a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd.

Virginia’s solicitor general, Toby Heytens, told

Richmond Circuit Court Judge Joi Taylor on Friday that law enforcement had identified ‘‘credible evidence’’ that armed out-of-state groups planned to come to Virginia with the possible intention of participating in a ‘‘violent insurrection’’.

The FBI has said the six men arrested – in Delaware, Georgia and Maryland – were linked to The Base, a collective of hardcore neo-Nazis that operates as a paramilitary organisation.

The Base has proclaimed war against minority communities within the US and abroad, the FBI has said. Unlike other extremist groups, it is not focused on spreading propaganda – instead, the group aims to bring together highly skilled