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Thousands of gun owners rallied in Richmond, Virginia on Martin Luther King Day to protest the state’s new gun laws.

This rally was one of the largest right-wing demonstrations in recent memory and effectively communicated citizen dissent against gun control. Nothing violent happened, bad optics were at a minimum (but goofy optics were aplenty), and conservative media lionized the demonstrators. Liberal journalists embarrassed themselves with their desire to portray the protests as a neo-Nazi revolt. The protests were a clear win for the Second Amendment crowd and follow the rise of gun sanctuaries in Virginia. Dozens of towns and counties in the Old Dominion vow to not enforce the state’s new gun laws.

Virginia’s gun fight is a happening that points in a positive direction for future resistance against dispossession. Many doomers have said Americans would hand over their guns without so much as a complaint. Virginia proves them wrong.

While the resistance toward gun laws is good, there are issues with the gun crowd from an identitarian perspective. Many ardent gun nuts are just as “anti-racist” as the worst cucks of the conservative movement. They want to keep the issue to just the guns themselves—a material object—and uphold hyper-individualism. The gun issue is implicitly racial, and only whites support gun rights. But the ones who make the biggest fuss about it are trying their hardest to keep the issue from becoming an identitarian cause.

This does not mean the issue is not worth fighting for and that their efforts are bad. It just means we need to push the issue in the right direction.

Guns are one of the few issues that Middle Americans will rise up over. That does not mean they will start the second American revolution—it just means they will find ways to resist a gun grab. Many right-wingers fantasize about a mass violent uprising if the government passed gun control. It wouldn’t be like that, but an oppositional force would arise that would effectively nullify the law. Take the example of gun sanctuaries.

At least 90 percent of Virginia’s counties have declared themselves gun sanctuaries, meaning they won’t enforce the state’s proposed new laws. The state legislature passed three laws last week that would expand background checks on firearm purchases and restrict where a person could take a firearm. The state is considering a red flag law that would allow judges to revoke the gun rights of any individual he deems a threat. Red flag laws could be used to bar dissidents from owning a gun. Other states have used red flag laws to disarm shitposters who joked about the Joker premiere.

Fortunately, rural Virginia does not want to enforce any gun law the legislature passes, putting the state in an uncomfortable position. The new gun laws have sparked a backlash that defies expectations about boomers and Middle Americans. Rather than complaining about the issue on the internet, they’ve taken to the streets, taken over town halls, and forced their local officials to support their gun rights. This speech from one local sheriff demonstrates how serious the gun boomers are.

Sheriff: I WILL NOT ENFORCE ANY UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAW.