Interview with Philip Van Cleave of Virginia Citizen Defense League

Virginia Gun Rights and Grassroots Advocacy with Philip Van CleaveIn this episode, James Moffitt hosts Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, to discuss the evolving landscape of gun rights at the state level and the crucial role of grassroots activism. They explore Virginia's recent legislative changes, the importance of volunteer efforts, and what gun owners can do to safeguard their Second Amendment rights.

Key Topics:

• The transformation of Virginia from a pro-gun to an anti-gun state and the political shifts involved

• The history and origins of the Virginia Citizens Defense League and its grassroots approach

• How grassroots volunteers have successfully fought for pro-gun legislation, including permitless carry and local preemption

• The significance of voter engagement and consistent advocacy in influencing state laws

• The dangers of complacency and the importance of ongoing activism to prevent efforts to disarm citizens

• The strategic importance of supporting state and national gun organizations

• How to protect gun rights during legislative sessions and elections

• The influence of misinformation and fear-mongering in gun control debates

• Virginia’s recent bans on certain firearms and the concept of grandfathering vs. banning

• The importance of being prepared and involved at all levels of government to defend Second Amendment rights

Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction to Virginia's gun rights landscape 

02:08 - The political shift in Virginia and its implications 

04:25 - Voting records and the decline of pro-gun Democrats 

06:19 - Origins of the Virginia Citizens Defense League and grassroots roots 

07:42 - Strategies used in fighting gun legislation in Virginia 

08:39 - Membership growth and large rallies as a grassroots success 

09:47 - Personal journey into gun rights activism and understanding the Second Amendment 

12:22 - The impact of misinformation about the Second Amendment 

14:41 - How advocacy and lobbying influence legislation 

16:11 - The power of individual voices and community activism 

18:50 - The importance of continuous engagement regardless of political climate 

21:55 - Virginia’s recent gun bans and grandfathering issues 

22:20 - The ongoing threat to gun rights and the importance of persistent activism 

26:51 - Volunteer efforts and accomplishments of Virginia gun groups 

28:13 - Strategies for legislative progress and setbacks 

30:31 - The end goal of gun control advocates and disarmament 

32:33 - Protecting rights through organizations and community involvement 

34:20 - The biggest mistakes gun owners make and threats to rights 

36:24 - The role of firearms in society and history 

39:36 - The significance of armed neighborhoods and self-defense 

43:36 - Misinformation about gun violence and media myths 

45:56 - The true causes of violence and the role of mental health 

47:50 - Stories of self-defense and law-abiding gun owners 

50:44 - The importance of ongoing advocacy and vigilance 

53:53 - Preparing for future legislative challenges 

55:22 - Final thoughts on grassroots activism and protecting Second Amendment rights Resources & Links:

• Virginia Citizens Defense League

• South Carolina Carry

• USCCA - United States Concealed Carry Association

• NRA - National Rifle Association

• Firearms Policy Coalition

Connect with Philip Van Cleave:

• LinkedIn

• Twitter

Remember, ongoing engagement, voter participation, and community activism are essential to preserving our Second Amendment rights. Stay informed, stay involved, and support your local gun rights organizations.

Call to Action for episodes 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And people think to themselves, and I think most of us do, and I was probably along those same lines back when I very first got involved in this, is well, I'm just one person. You know, if I call them, that's just one person calling us that's not gonna mean nothing. But it turns out that if a a legislator gets ten calls on a bill, that's like, whoa. They kind of they stop and go, wait a minute. If ten people have called, there's probably a thousand out there uh that are thinking the same thing but haven't called. So this sounds like this is either something I should be supporting or something I should be um opposing. We rapidly we rapidly find out that your voice is actually much louder than you think it is. Because most people in America just don't bother. They just they just ignore what's going on. So those that are actually in the fight actually have a have a lot of uh a lot of power to them. And that so that's very important. Uh do not underestimate what your voice will mean to your legislator.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

My name is James Moffat, and I will be your host. Today on the Liberty and Gun Rights Podcast, we're gonna talk about the fight for the Second Amendment at the state level and what it really takes to protect those rights. My guest, my special guest is Philip Van Cleve, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League and one of the leading voices in grassroots gun rights advocacy. Philip, thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

No, thank you for having me on, James.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Yeah, do me a favor and uh introduce yourself to the listening audience.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Okay, all right. Uh again, it's Philip Van Cleve. I'm the president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League and have been since 2001. Uh the group formed back in 1994 as a Northern Virginia Citizens Defense League. And um I uh I became a member one year later and and so forth, became president in 2001. Uh and uh also have my own little software company, but that's kind of faded away over time. This has just taken over everything, and it's worth it. I'd much rather fight this battle protecting our rights than selling software that I've written.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Well, as I told you before I hit the record button, I'm with uh I'm the vice president over at South Carolina Kerry and uh Mike Darelia, who you know is the president, and uh we've only been in existence since 2015. So you you've been in the fight a little bit longer than us. And uh we've been watching from you know as your as your neighboring state at all of the things that have been going on there, and uh your state was and your organization was kind of a uh a role model or blueprint for what we wanted to do here in South Carolina. So, Philip, what's happening right now at the state level, the gun owners across the country are not paying enough attention but should be.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Absolutely. Virginia is uh sort of actually sort of a purple state normally. Uh so I think it's alarmed a lot of people as to what's happened here with the uh uh basically with the Democrat Party having turned completely uh anti-gun. Let me let me put it this way, how they've changed. Back in 1994, CDL formed as the Northern Virginia Citizens Defense League. 95, 1995, right out of the box, we got one of the biggest pro-gun things done in Virginia, and that was to convert the state from a may issue state to a shall issue state, okay? That was a big deal. Now, one year, we did it the first time, didn't have to battle it out, just one year we got it done. But the configuration of Virginia at that time in 1995, the Democrats controlled the House, the Democrats controlled the Senate, and we had a Republican governor. In that configuration, we got one of the strongest program bills passed. Now, flash forward to now, and the Democrats controlled the House, they control the Senate, but the difference right this year is that uh we also have a Democrat governor before we had a Republican governor, Governor Yuncan. Um, and the the Democrats back in '95, there were a lot of blue dog Democrats that supported gun rights. They may have differed with Republicans on social policies, but the Blue Dogs absolutely agreed with the Republicans on the importance of the Second Amendment, and that's how we got our shell issue passed with their help. But now flash forward to now and try in the Senate. We had one Democrat vote correctly once on a whole slew of bills, and she admitted that she did it by mistake. She screwed up, she thought she should have voted yes and she voted no or something. So we, you know, she vote the vote counted, so we gave her credit for it. But, you know, she had a 2% voting record. Everybody else in the Senate has a zero if they're a Democrat. Republicans, almost all a hundred percent voting record, a couple 95, 98, 97. Uh in the House, there was one Democrat that had a 41% voting record on, and they have the majority, they have like 60-something uh uh Democrats in the House. One of them voted 41%, a couple of them voted 9% in in favor of gun rights, and most of them were zero, too. So basically, if you look at it, we do an analysis of voting records at the end, and I've already done it for this year. And again, it's red for Republicans at the top. They dominate 100% voting record down to the into the 90s in both House and Senate, and Democrats are pretty much down at the bottom at zero. I mean, there's a whole empty area in between those two. And they're not they used to blend. Used to be you could see Democrats floating up into the red areas and some of the red floating down a little further. Don't have that anymore. And that didn't happen overnight, but it's been coming on. And you might think that, oh, this is just voters changing what they want. What we saw over the years was, and starting with McCulliff, really got my attention. We had him for governor. He was a Democrat. He started primarying any Democrat that did not tow his line. So the the blue dog Democrats were targeted and primaried out. So we ended up with what we've got now, this horribly divided General Assembly.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Can you tell me, uh tell our listening audience a little bit about your what is it, the Virginia? Citizens Defense League. Citizens Defense League, yes. Can you tell me a little bit about your organization, how it came to to be, and the importance of grassroots uh volunteerism and all of that?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Yeah. Uh yeah, we formed again in 1994, and the question is why? What caused us to form? Well, basically, we got tired of people being turned down because we were a May issue state. Uh, there were some judges that wouldn't give a permit to women, believe it or not. We had judges tell women, you know, men need guns, women don't need guns. Then we had some that were the opposite of that. You're a man, you don't need a gun. Women need guns. Some wouldn't give them to minorities, some wouldn't give them to anybody except maybe some people that supported them at some point politically. So we just and some gave it to anybody that asked. So we just said, this is it's look, we shouldn't need permission. The Second Amendment doesn't mention anything about permission. But if we're stuck with that mode, it needs to be equitable. It needs to be even. So that's that's why we formed and that's what we fixed right out of the box. The uh the gun control crowd tried to kill that bill by putting in a poison pill. And the poison pill was, well, you can't carry in a restaurant that serves alcohol. But rather than fall for that, we said, okay, fine, we'll do that. Because we'd looked at the law. All it said was you can't carry concealed in a restaurant that serves alcohol. Virginia is an open carry state without a permit needed. So we just told our members, hey, take your coat off before you go in a restaurant that serves alcohol, and you're good. And that actually worked for a decade before we finally got that overturned because nobody even noticed. You take your coat off, go with a gun. It was so rare anybody even noticed it. It wasn't even a big deal. So that's what we did. Uh, and we had our shell issue conceal carry.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

So, how many members did you do you did you have back then? And how many do you have now?

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Well, it originally started um with uh about 300 members. Actually, it was 30 initially, but then it rapidly grew to 300. Uh, we're now sitting at about, I think last I checked, it's been about a couple of months, about 12,000. Um our peak was about 24,000. That was when that big, huge 2020 rally when we had 50,000 people show up in Richmond. Oh, if you remember that. Yeah, we've got pictures on our website. That was absolutely everybody was in shock at the size of that crowd. And that was after the governor, uh, we had a horrible governor called Northam, a Democrat, who tried everything he could think of to scare people away from not showing up. They banned guns in the area where the where the speakers were going to be in in Capitol Square. They um said, oh, there could be white supremacy, there could be trouble there, you know. And they they all this stuff, all these rumors and stuff were put out there and so forth. So I think in the end it probably cut the crowd in half. I think we could have easily had a hundred thousand, but fifty thousand was awe-inspiring. And when we were done, the newspapers noted that that part of Richmond was cleaner after we left than before we got there. And we brought our own trash pegs, we picked up trash that wasn't even ours, took the trash bags, and uh it was it was uh gun owners are they're really great people, you know.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Man, I agree. So, Philip, let's go back a little bit and tell us how did you become what was your interest in the Second Amendment and being a Second Amendment a activist?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

That's yeah, that's an interesting story. So I I grew up in Illinois, uh in the suburbs of Chicago. And uh there I had a, you know, as a kid in the 50s and and 60s, well uh more in the 60s, uh, I, you know, I had BB guns and and pellet guns and stuff like that. And Illinois hadn't really turned as crazy as it is now. I remember going with my my older sister and mother to the racetrack, and I brought a what looked like a Remington 870 shotgun that was a water gun. Nobody even batted an eye for an hour or two. Security showed up, looked at the gun, laughed, and walked away. Nowadays, they would have shut down the whole racetrack, brought in SWAT. You know, even Illinois was different there. But anyhow, I moved to Texas, got my first shotgun when I was 16, uh, did some hunting, and when I turned 21, I joined the Bear County Sheriff's Department as a as a reserve officer, and that's why I bought my first handgun. And so I I carried a gun as a reserve deputy in Texas uh for seven years until I moved to Virginia. Interesting. So I got when I got here in 1980, there was it was May issue. I was told don't even don't even bother. It's $100 to apply. They can keep your money and tell you no. Unless you have your own business and you're carrying cash, that they're just not going to give it to you. So I just kind of shrugged and and threw my hands up in the air, and uh nobody told me about open carry being legal. That wasn't legal in Texas at that time. So I didn't even ask about that. What happened was uh so for for years I I had a gun at home, but I didn't carry it. But that bothered me. But it was like, what can you do? So you know these things in life where adrenaline hits you and you have a perfect picture of something, like maybe you were frightened or extremely happy, and you remember that clearly. Right. Adrenaline locks these memories in. I remember on July 2nd, in the den of my house, walking by the television and hearing the uh newscaster say, and today is the second day where people can now apply for a concealed handgun permit, and it has to be issued unless the government can show that you're disqualified. I froze in my tracks and I immediately checked into that, tried to get in, you had to get a class. Trying to find one took like a month and a half to get in because everybody at that time Virginia had probably about two and a half thousand permit holders. We have three-quarters of a million now. I mean, that's that's how that demand exploded. Right. I finally got uh, you know, I was waiting, got the class, and now if they had 90 days to issue the permit, meanwhile, I went on vacation and I was in Hawaii sitting on a beach reading gun magazines because now that I was no longer an officer, I was looking at carrying concealed, which is something I didn't really bother with much in Texas. I can as a police officer I could just open carry, and uh, I started reading articles. And besides looking at guns and trying to pick figure out what I wanted to go with, I carried a revolver in Texas, but I realized semi-autos might be the way to go. So I was looking at that, but then suddenly I was reading articles that that talked about the Second Amendment. Now, I had been fed the baloney that it's a it's a uh you know, it's a common or it's a right of the of the people generally. It's not an individual right. And the more I read this stuff, the more I'm going, what? And then I really got into it. So I'm sitting there on holiday just reading all these gun magazines, as many as I could buy, and going through them. Every time I hit these things talking about the Second Amendment, I realized I'd been lied to. And I'd be, I was furious. It was like the the government lied to me, the press lied to me, the schools lied to me, and then I started doing research. I read uh U U US versus Miller, and I said, wait a minute, this never this ruling isn't that long. It said nothing about private gun ownership not being a only being a collective uh right for the Second Amendment, that you didn't private guns were not covered. No, that's not what it said. Mr. Miller had a sawed-off shotgun, and nobody bothered to tell the the Supreme Court that, yeah, that is used in war. That is useful to a militia. Had he had a machine gun or a start-off rifle, something like that, I the whole thing would have turned out the different, completely different. So we've been lied to about what that said. So anyhow, all this got me going. I live in Richmond, so I'm close to the General Assembly. I can be there in 20 minutes. So once I got my permit, that that next year, the session, the General Assembly came into session, I said, I need to go down there. I don't know what I'm gonna, I've never done this before. I want to go down there and and talk to senators and delegates and try to fix anything I could do to restore our right to keep and bear arms. But I was just an individual, untrained, didn't know anything about any of this stuff. But I went down there and I ran right into the Northern Virginia Citizens Defense League that had formed that that year, or the year before, and I, you know, and had done this. And they had nobody in Richmond. If they wanted to lobby, they had to drive two hours. So it was like a marriage made in heaven. They taught me what I needed to know about what to do in the General Assembly and about lobbying and all the protocols, and I could be there and and represent them in a flash. So it was perfect for both of us. I got what I was looking for, trying to change these laws, and they got what they were looking for is somebody that could actually be in Richmond all the time and do this. So that's how I got involved. They basically the gun control crowd made a permanent enemy out of me with all the lies that I had been told. I didn't want anybody else to fall for those same lies.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Well, that's awesome. And I uh that's a wonderful story, and I appreciate you sharing it. So to talk to me about volunteers and the impact that that gun owners can have with regards to uh helping to shape and form gun legislation.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Absolutely. I and that's one of the most misunderstood aspects of of lobbying. And people think to themselves, and I think most of us do, and I was probably along those same lines back when I very first got involved in this, is well, I'm just one person. You know, if I call them, that's just one person calling. That's that's gonna mean nothing. But it turns out that if a legislator gets 10 calls on a bill, that's like, whoa. They kind of they stop and go, wait a minute, if 10 people have called, there's probably a thousand out there that are thinking the same thing, but haven't called. So this sounds like this is either something I should be supporting or something I should be um opposing. We rapidly, you rapidly find out that your voice is actually much louder than you think it is, because most people in America just don't bother. They just they just ignore what's going on. So those that are actually in the fight actually have a have a lot of uh a lot of power to them. And that so that's very important. Uh do not underestimate what your voice will mean to your legislator.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Absolutely. Well, at South Carolina Kerry, we we have tried since 2015 to motivate legal gun owners to to write emails, leave voicemail, call and talk to the staffers, write letters, write letters to the posting courier downtown, you know, in Charleston. Uh just just get involved. And I think when President Trump came during his first term in 2016, I heard a lot of people, a lot of Second Amendment folks say, well, they're not going to come for our guns because President Trump's pro-guns. And so we don't have we just don't have to worry about it. You know, and you have you have towns with municipalities, you have cities like Carlson and Richmond, and you have state level legislators, senators, and house of representatives, and there's so many levels of government between us and President Trump in the federal level. Uh and and we have to understand that the gun grabbers and you know they've been trying to pass red flag laws for how long now? And and all that needs to happen is for good people to be silent, for bad people to get their way, for for the gun control people to actually take control. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

I think that he hit the dale on the head, especially that's what happened here in Virginia. Trump got elected. So he had two uh two parts of that. Part one was he motivated all the Trump derangement syndrome people, uh, which are mostly Democrats. There were some Republicans in that pool, but mostly Democrats. He activated them because they couldn't stand him and his America First agenda. The uh what you just said applied to the red areas of the state where they kind of said, you know, we got Trump in there. We don't have to worry about gun control. We're not gonna, nothing's gonna happen in Virginia. And what it is, James, is they don't look, part of it's their fault and part of it's not. They don't teach civics anymore, and they haven't been teaching it for a long time. And so a lot of these people don't really understand how government works. They figure that the president's got it, that everything down below is safe, and they don't understand, oh no, you know, the way America's laid out, the states are s have a certain amount of sovereignty in their government and so forth. And then you've got local government, uh, as you say, on top of that. So you've got levels. And again, just because the state may be good on guns doesn't mean that if they don't have strong preemption, that doesn't mean your locality couldn't pass a bunch of gun control. It just depends on how your constitution and how your government's set up. That's a big problem. And hunters are a problem. Hunters are some of the worst about getting registered and voting. They just don't want to get involved. Well, in Virginia, they're now starting to feel the pain. Because again, hunters have always felt exempt. Well, they'll never come for my hunting guns. Well, guess what? Uh, this this new gun ban includes shotguns and and and so forth. Uh, you know, the shotgun has as a detachable magazine or a pistol grip. That's enough. It's now something you can't buy after July 1. So this is a battle. We're all, no matter why you own a gun, you you should, you're, you've got to be part of protecting that right so we can hand it on to the next generation. And I will say that's the danger of this grandfathering. Yes, we got grandfathering in Virginia now. We can keep any any quote unquote assault firearm that we have prior to July 1 of this year. We can keep any capacity magazine that we have prior to July 1 of this year, but then that's it. You can't buy higher capacity magazines after July, and you can't buy an AR, AK, or any assault firearm after that date. And some people go, well, good. I'm protected. I can keep my guns. That is absolutely the wrong attitude. Who are we to say, okay, I'm good, but the hell with the next generation? What about the next one coming up? We've got to protect them. We've got to hand them the same rights that were handed to us. We cannot abandon them and just be selfish and say, well, I'm okay. That's that's so un-American, it makes it it just makes my head spin. But people will fall for that. Do not fall for it. Yes, we have a grace period now with those of us that own these guns, but we need to fight harder than ever to get rid of that ban so the next generation will have all the freedoms to own what we own.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Right. And I think I think one of the messages that we need to send out during this episode and in all of our dealings with local legal gun owners or the legislature or legislators or whoever, the fight is continuous. The the gun grabbers and the gun control people are never going to rest ever. They're never going to rest. They're going to constantly come after our rights. And and the only way we're going to safeguard our rights is to stand up and say, hell no, no, you are not going to do that. And it and it and it requires all of us to stand up as one. And and and do our part. Now, look, I get it, life happens. We all have to work, we have bills to pay, we have families to raise, we have kids going to school, we go to church. There's a lot of things that are going on in our lives, and I understand that that none of us are going to have the time, the energy, or the funds that the gun grabbers and gun control people that are being they're being financed by Saros and all these billionaires. You know, here in South Carolina, when we were working on getting we'll see what did we do? We we helped get reciprocity with Georgia so you could go back and forth with a concealed carry permit. We got uh restaurant carry so that allowed you to carry concealed into a restaurant. You couldn't belly up to the bar and drink, but you could go with your family through the parking lot. You could park your car, get out of your car. What's the most dangerous places in the world? Is the parking lot between your car and Walmart or the car and the shopping center or a restaurant or whatever. So we got we fought to get uh restaurant carry passed, and then we got we got open carry with permit, and that was a huge fight. And in all the different things, we've got about five different things passed, or we finally got open carry passed where you don't have to have a permit. You can either conceal carry with a permit or you can just open carry if you're a legal gun owner, right? And uh it's like mom's demand action, and all these different gun control groups were bust into Columbia, South Carolina. They they the legislators always had public hearings. What time do you think they had those hearings? Probably during the workday. Absolutely, yeah, between nine and five, right? Yeah. Because they knew, they knew unless you were retired and had the time to go down there and sit in those public hearings, you know, they didn't have to worry about it. They didn't have to worry about the general public who were supportive of the Second Amendment and supportive of open carry. They didn't have to worry about that because who is going to be in the who was going to be in the public arena? It was going to be all mom's demand action ladies, you know, sitting there with their whatever color shirts, I think the red shirts, yeah, something like that. Yeah, red to shirt. They had red shirts, red, red t-shirts on that said mom's demand action. And all these, all we had police chiefs, sheriffs that showed up that that petitioned against it. Not all of the sheriffs did. The the actual president of the sheriff's association was one of the leading proponents against open carry. And I I tried to get him on the I tried to get him on the podcast, and for some strange reason he didn't want to talk to me about it on microphone. But but the thing that the thing that we have to tell legal gun owners is that you can't you can't rest on your laurels and you can't just assume that the rights you have today are going to carry over to tomorrow. Yeah. Right? And and I that's one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is because man, y'all were y'all were doing great. And y'all had uh wonderful gun laws, and and we were sitting over here in South Carolina going, wow, I wish I wish we could do that. And and one of the reasons you y'all were able to do it is because you had volunteers that came out of the woodwork and did stuff, right? And yeah, absolutely. Tell me some of the stuff that your volunteers did for you or did for the cause. Not for you.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Well, I mean, DCDL's got a long list of accomplishments over the years. Um, you know, we got full preemption. We started in in 2003 by preempting a permit holder from any local gun control. Then in 2004, we came back for everybody and got that passed. So we had no local gun control until 2020 when the Democrats took over the House, the Senate, and the governorship. And that was that huge rally we had because they were talking about, well, maybe we should confiscate ARs. And boy, was that a mistake to bring that up. Boy, that that lit Northam was was a putt. And that's and that's to be j generous. Boy, did he light up the light up everything with that. So anyhow, we've gotten a lot of things done over the years, a lot of bills passed. You know, we had like before you couldn't if you were hunt bow hunting, you couldn't have a handgun on you. He said, if you're carrying concealed with a pyramid for self-defense, let's allow the bow hunter to be armed because you're not always walking around with the bow that you could use. So we got all that just one thing after another. Every year we had accomplishments. We kept moving the ball forward. And part of that was for a while the Republicans um had control of everything during that period. Unfortunately that does that's not a guarantee. We tried to get a permittless carry, what some states call constitutional. We've moved away from that because constitutional to me would imply you we could get rid of all the carry bands and all that stuff. Take us back to the Constitution. So instead we call it permitless carry. You can do without a permit what you can do with a permit, or maybe minor differences in there. So we tried for that, gosh, years ago. Maybe twenty seventeen and couldn't get it through the Republican committee chair, would not let it out. And so we had the opportunity to do it and it died. Well, we got a lot done during that time, but things changed in twenty twenty. That's when uh the all this gun control started pouring in. And uh that huge rally I told you about, that that had a strong effect. That they were putting an assault weapon ban and again they were thinking about confiscation even. The whole thing disappeared the next day. After that rally, the very next day, that bill came up in a committee, it wasn't even supposed to be in front of, and the first order of business was to kill the bill. Boom, gone. I mean, that's they saw that crowd said, okay, no, not not touching ARs or AKs, gone. Um and then they muted down other stuff that was going to be much stronger, like our red flag law was actually had a whole lot of protections that most states don't have that have that law and so forth. That that again, that was grassroots activism uh that that uh that absolutely uh turned the tide. But we keep this in mind, the end goal for the gun controllers and why they won't go away is the end goal is complete civilian disarmament. And they will probably be just fine with the police being disarmed, just like England. So don't if you're a police officer, don't think that can't happen to you. Uh in fact this year in Virginia they the the Democrats specifically did not exempt off duty and retired police from being able to carry an assault weapon in public. That's another ban that came in. You can't carry one in public. And i they didn't they did not you only on duty police can do that. That's you know, and and secure licensed security guards on duty. So um I'm I'm I'm telling everybody, if you're a hunter, if you're a police officer, whatever, you need to be away because the end end game is take away all of our guns. And they're doing that using the excuse of crime. Oh, we've got to do something about crime. Well, like in Richmond, when I hear of a shooting, I know it's gonna be a one of three places. Okay? I know where it's gonna be. It's always the same areas, it's it's always drug people killing drug people or whatever. So and what they what they started doing back around 2018-2019 is they started there was a push by Democrats to let violent people out of prison early, to get rid of bail, to defund the police, all of that stuff. Now, what does all that do? I mean, just you and I talking common sense. That's going to drive up crime rate, right? If you take a violent predator, put him on the streets, he's a violent predator, he's a predator, what is he going to do? He is gonna predate on innocent people. Well, yes, that was what they wanted. So they could because they w it wasn't working. Gun gun ownership was going up thanks to Obama and and Biden and so forth. And uh crime was going down all that time. When they started doing this stuff, then the crime started to go up. Uh and now they had a model they could they could work on. So don't get tied up too much in, oh well this doesn't, you know, this won't affect criminals. They don't care. That's just an excuse. We need this law they claim for crime, baloney. They want the law, and all these laws will make sense to you when you look at a thousand feet looking down on all the stuff going on, when you think civilian disarmament, that's the puzzle that you'll see come together. And that's why we've got to fight this. This is this is an end game, and if they succeed, you can kiss all of your rights goodbye. That's it. So those of you that may not be active for other reasons, you need to be active protecting guns because once that goes, your first amendment's gone, your fourth amendment's gonna go, fifth amendment, forget it.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

So Well, let's say you're working nine to five and you you can't physically be at a rally, or you can't physically be at the state house to listen to to testimony or to give testimony in a in a public hearing. You can support VCDL, you can support South Carolina Cary. You c there there are so many different, you know, the NRA, friends of the NRA, and there there are half a dozen Second Amendment, pro-Second Amendment organizations like yours that is there trying to do the hard work, and so you can donate. You can donate your money to to those organizations, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:17

And on weekends you could maybe work a gun. If they have like we have we have we have a table of gun shows. You know, you could work the table, help get other people involved. You could talk to people in your church about or where you work or your friends and family, educate them about the right to keep and bear arms. You can write uh you can send emails. Like our our organization, we send out an email alert, and if we want you to contact your senator, your delegate, we've made it all you have to do is click on a link. It brings up a pre-written message that you can edit if you want to customize it. We encourage people to customize, but you don't have to. You put in your name and address, it figures out who your legislator is, and boom, off it goes. It takes you like um in less than 30 seconds to do this. Anyone can find that much time to to do that. That helps. If they get a thousand emails in an hour because it's on a certain bill, you're gonna get their attention.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Absolutely. So what's the biggest mistake you see gun owners make when it comes to protecting their rights?

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Well, taking them for granted. You know, basically saying, oh, you know, it's it's what what we've got is the ostrich with the head in the sand approach by a lot of gun owners. Hear no evil, see no evil, you know, I'll be safe. Now this will never happen to me. You know, we're good here, this state's great. No, you know, that's the biggest mistake. This the right to keep in bare arms is unique to America, and that's why they want to take it away. You can't have one world socialist government if you've got this one country that's a shining light on the hill that shows that everything about socialism doesn't work and that what we have works, and we have a right to protect ourselves that nobody else has across in the world. You can't take that for granted. That's something that people, again, will do anything they can to disarm you. Yeah, I know. What we've got is numbers. What Soros and Bloomberg have is money. It'd be nice if we had a billionaire on our site. Boy, what I could do, you know, with $10 million or something, but we don't have that. So they pay these people and they do the buses for them and they get them out to lobby in your state as if they live there. Nobody checks to see where they live. So they they're funding this. We don't have that. But what we've got is numbers. They've got we've got real grassroots. We've got people that vote, people that are passionate about this right. They have paid people. Some of them are passionate, maybe they've lost that family member, but most of them, they're paid members and they're astroturf. There aren't that many of them. There are nowhere near as many of them as there are us. There's a hundred million gun owners in America. Well, if you think about it, that's fifty times bigger than the biggest military, okay, in the world. Just us. When Yakimoto or whatever said there's a gun behind every blade of grass in World War II in America, let's not go there. He wasn't kidding. And now we've got we've got a lot more gun owners with a lot better firearms than we had back in the world. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Absolutely. And I, you know, we had uh we had an incident in Charleston, South Carolina, I think it's been about ten years or so ago, where they this group of people, I forget who the group is, but they they came down and they actually burned part of downtown Charleston. And and they these groups, I don't know if you remember the name of that group or the the I wish I could remember it. But anyway, anybody listening to this podcast episode that that lives here, they'll they'll know right off the top of their head who it was. But these these criminals that that terrorized locations, they they seem to only pick the locations where the government is run by Democrats and by liberals. And and the the mayor of the of Charleston at that time basically told the police to stand down and oh they have a right to protest, they have a right to do what they're doing. Yeah, they have a they have a First Amendment right to gather in public spaces and speak their mind and tell us what they think, right? That's what the First Amendment does. Does that give them a right to terrorize people, hurt people, burn down buildings, and vandalize uh businesses that owners have spent, you know, love, sweat, and tears to put those businesses together? No, that doesn't, it makes them criminals and terrorists. And and they took Charleston by surprise, and it I think it was up to, I was listening to it on a police scanner when it was going down. And it wasn't until all the area law enforcement agencies got their act together and they started sending SWAT teams and they started sending boots on the ground. And it was around 12 30 in the morning where they finally drove them out of downtown Charleston and got them out of there, but it wasn't before they did millions of dollars of damage.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

So why didn't they try that out in the rural areas?

SPEAKER_00 36:01

It wasn't gonna that because that wouldn't happen. I'll guarantee you there are militias, there are people that that own firearms that that train, they're IVPA, and they train all the time. And like when they're blocking traffic, like like like these groups block traffic. You couldn't go into rural America and do that because the good old boys with their four-wheel drive pickup trucks would just plow through them and be like, you're not gonna keep me from going to work and making a living on screw that's you're not doing it. Yeah. Well, do you remember the rooftop Koreans? Yes. Was it wasn't it down in that in Los Angeles? Yes. And they called them rooftop Koreans because the the Korean business owners were not gonna stand for the the rioters and looters to destroy their businesses. And they went up there with AR-15s and and uh AKs and whatever else they had. They armed themselves and they drove those people away. They were allowed to be.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

And the important note there is they didn't have to fire a shot. The crowd looked up, saw them holding those rifles, and said, you know what? I think we're gonna go somewhere else. Yeah, that's the beauty of firearms because they are a lethal instrument capable of projecting deadly force at it at a distance that alone most of the time is sufficient for stopping somebody from attacking. Now, one out of ten, you're gonna have to shoot the person, but nine out of ten, just drawing the gun is sufficient. That's the power and the importance of this. But if we didn't have those guns, what would have happened to those businesses? What might have happened? There were people that were beat to death and stuff in those riots. Look what's happening in England. Okay, they disarmed everybody. They don't even want you to have a knife anymore. A butter knife would be okay, but nothing with it with a blade and a sharp tip on it. And now a guy came, for example, from England, flew to Florida, filmed himself on and put it up, I think, on YouTube or Facebook or something, shooting a shotgun in Florida, perfectly legal, doing a little skeeter trap shooting, probably. Goes back to England and they arrest him because people were upset seeing him shooting gun. You know, that kind of insanity we wouldn't put up with here, but over there they have to. They've got nothing. They've got nothing. The government can do whatever it wants, you've got rocks to throw, and they've got bullets. So you you're now you're definitely a subject, which the British have mostly been, but they've been freer than they've been than they are right now in the past. At one time in the twenties and before, they were they could carry guns in their pockets, revolvers without permits or anything. Very low crime rate there. Just that they didn't kill each other over things. They they had violent crime, they still do, but it's a shame, but we can't let that happen here. We simply can't.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

An armed society is a civilized society. It is.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Oh, absolutely. I in fact, I've uh a couple thoughts on that that I thought were kind of interesting. At gun shows. A good friend of mine, Dennis O'Connor, uh, went with me to a gun show and he saw a gun he wanted to buy here in Richmond. So he whips out this wad full of cash to buy the gun. And he looks at me and he looks around. We're surrounded by people everywhere. A lot of them have guns on their hips, although albeit unloaded in theory. And he said, Where else in the world would I pull out a wad of cash like this, surrounded by these many people I don't know and feel completely comfortable? Where else in the world would that happen? In fact, in gun shows, a lot of times the people back into somebody else, but everybody's saying, excuse me. It's not that we're frightened of each other, but you you know, uh part of it's the mentality of a lot most gun owners. I think most of the gun owners I know are great people. Now if that's what the world had in it, we wouldn't need to lock our doors anymore. But that but that's an example. Do people pull out guns and start shooting? No. Um and and then the other side lies about that. They know that we're not that the people like like me and you are not dangerous. But in committee, they'll go, all these people, if if they bump my shopping cart, they probably if I bump their shopping cart, they pull out a gun. Or if the waitress brought them cold food, he'd pull out a gun and shoot her. They do all this stuff, and then they come out and start yelling in our faces. You know, and I'm thinking, wait a minute, I'm armed and you're yelling in my face? Aren't you afraid that I'm going to go off and shoot you? No, of course you're not. You know the truth, but you lie to everybody about it and make it sound like I'm a dangerous person when actually you're the one that has anger control issues. I don't. But you're projecting them on me. I don't have that. You got it. It's good you don't own a gun because you can't control your own temper.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

So it's called fear-mongering. And that's what you that's what you hear in the the liberal media. What what is the thing that just makes my head spin? What's the what's the statement that they always say? Not not gun control, but uh gun violence.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

That's yes, they coin gun violence. Gun violence.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Every time you hear of anything happening, it's gun violence. Gun violence. Gun violence is a a a an uh health care epidemic in America. That's why they ever need to be disarmed. Yeah, we need a vaccine. I've got a I've got a gun safe behind me that's got guns in it and ammo. Most of them, most of them are loaded, and you know, none of those guns have ever left the the safe. Even if I left the safe open, they wouldn't crawl out and go shoot somebody because guns aren't violent. And people just don't freaking get that. And I tell them all day long, I'm like, I don't want to hear about gun violence because guns are not violent. Why don't we hear about car violence? Why are we not talking about car violence? Because there's more drunk drivers killing people with automobiles. Well, guess who did the killing? It wasn't the damn object. It was the person, it was the drunk behind the wheel that was being stupid and careless, right? We don't we don't have automobile violence in America.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

We have gun violence because guns and you're applying logic and reason to gun control. Logic and reason and gun control don't get together. It's like oil and water and makes, you know.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Well I know.

SPEAKER_01 41:51

But they uh but you know, we try because we're logical and we're reasonable about stuff and so we try to explain why they're wrong. Sometimes you can convince somebody. Usually though, when I when I'm talking to a gun controller like that, I'm really doing it more to influence the people listening. They're sitting on the fence and they can hear both arguments and they can decide for themselves what side of the fence they really want to be on. But yeah, the gun violence thing was was a made-up term. It's as if no other violence matters. So yeah, if you I got stabbed at it, oh well, okay, he's dead, but it wasn't a gun that was used, so we don't care. No, it was intentionally picked to to do what you said, basically to make people think that the gun is the problem. It's not just violence, it's it's the gun. If the gun wasn't there, there would be no violence.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

No, what what we have is a we have a problem with our criminal justice system, we have a problem with our mental health mental retardation system, we have a problem with government in general, right? And and it's like, I don't know if you subscribe to it or not. I've I subscribe to USCCA, United States Concealed Carry Association. I get their magazine.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Yeah, that magazine is once a quarter.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

And if you read some of the stories, these they have two or three pages of stories from all across America, every state of people that use weapons, guns in in a self-defense manner to protect themselves and loved ones. You got carjackings, you got people getting the doors kicked in, you got home invasions, you got you know people getting attacked out in the in the in the shopping malls, all manner of stories where law-abiding citizens use guns for self-defense. Do you hear any of these stories in the liberal media?

SPEAKER_01 43:38

No, no, no, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Never local media. You never hear any of this, not even in the local media. A lot of times the local media is liberally owned, and they they're not going to run that story because they don't they don't want people to hear that a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun. They may they make fun of it because they think that. Oh well that's just that's just mentally ill mental illness talking.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Yeah, I tell people when they when they this whole idea that you said that you rail against, and I agree, the whole idea is that guns are like a disease that and I go I go, no, actually you've got it backwards. Guns are a vaccine against crime.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

They don't create crime, they're used to stop crime. They're a vaccine, they're not a disease. So you've got you've got it backwards.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

And of course their heads melt down, but well, so for someone listening who cares about the Second Amendment but hasn't been involved, what's the first step they should take to make a real impact?

SPEAKER_01 44:34

Well, number one, get involved with with the local there's there's two gun organizations you should join, a local organization for the state and one federally. So again, the GOA federally, NRA federally, fire alarms policy coalition, there's a whole, there's like seven of them nationally. Locally, it depends on your state. You know, we got again Virginia Citizens Defense League here, you got South Carolina and grassroots North Carolina, wherever you are, there's there's almost always uh um a statewide gun group. Understand that most of your gun control is at the state level. I'll give you an example. I, you know, I'm under the same federal laws that somebody in DC is or Maryland or South Carolina or Alaska or Hawaii. However, you can open carry in Virginia without a permit. Come visit us, open carry if you want, no problem. Go to DC and try that. Go to Maryland and try that. Go to New York and try walking around with a gun on your hips.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

No.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Yeah, that's all that's all that stuff. Most of the really bad stuff is at the state level. That's why you've got to be a member of a state group that's active getting things done and protecting your rights. But believe me, what happened here can happen anywhere. It's just that they can pull the same tricks in your state. They can just slowly convert every Democrat into a radical anti-gunner by filtering out the ones that aren't. And then if they get control, um then it starts. So we've got to stop this. And we're we're determined. I mean, because I've had people in V Virginia say, Well, I'll just move to another state. I said, Well, get an apartment, because you're gonna be moving a lot if we don't stop it here. It's gonna keep spreading. It's retreating isn't how you win a war. Our founding fathers wouldn't want us to have retreated from Virginia where freedom started, um, just because something bad happened. Well, they stood up against the s the the strongest military in the world, the superpower back in back then England. And we're gonna retreat because Bloomberg sends in a bunch of goons and tries to and basically influence its elections? No, we've got to fight back. We cannot give up on it. So stay, you know, stay and fight and make sure your state doesn't turn into what's happening here, and then keep your eye on Virginia, because we're gonna we're fighting a fight to turn this around here and maybe to teach other states how to get control back and reinstate uh your rights.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

Have you have you heard about the National Reciprocity Act that they've been trying to implement up in Washington? Where where is that at, or do you know?

SPEAKER_01 47:05

It's I think it's just you know, like so many things in Congress, it can sit there and never be acted upon. I've not heard of any any real motion on it. That would that would be nice. I will say this though, we got 29 states that are, you know, permitless carry. Like Virginia's surrounded. We've got Tennessee, Kentucky, and uh West Virginia. Maryland, no, DC, no, but we've got that. North Carolina honors all permits as we do now, but that's gonna change. And that's something you might want to check our website later in the year after July and definitely by early next year to see what states we're gonna drop reciprocity with. So we honor everybody. That's gonna change again. The Democrats just it never had a problem. None of this has been an issue. Doesn't matter. They want to fix it. And you know, they want to fix something that's not broken to break it.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

We always we always tell people if you're traveling, get on get on uh USCCA's website. They actually have an app you can download to your phone that'll tell you, they'll it'll ask you where do you have your permit at in South Carolina, where are you traveling? Do they do they honor our re do they have reciprocity with South Carolina? If they don't, you can't carry a gun there. You just can't open carry. Some states you can't even conceal carry. Some states, like up in, like you said, Maryland and any of those North Connecticut, any of those northeastern states, even if you're a police officer, if you're a sworn police officer in South Carolina and you go to New York City or you go to Connecticut or Maryland, and they pull you over in traffic and catch you with a gun in your car, you're gonna go to you're gonna go to jail. You'll you might get out of jail, but you'll go to jail.

SPEAKER_01 48:40

Now keep in mind, for example, I don't know what's gonna happen. The attorney general who's our attorney general, oh, don't even start me on that guy. He's the one that fantasized about shooting uh a political opponent. He used to be a Speaker of the House, a Republican Speaker of the House, and watching his children die. Yeah, this guy's loony, and he won because of Trump derangement syndrome. So, anyhow, he's gonna be determining what states we honor. But like if we say, let's say we honor Utah, well, if you got a Utah permit as a non-resident, then you would be able to carry in Virginia on your Utah permit. We just don't know how that's gonna pan out. We do have open carry, no permit required. And you can get a Virginia non-resident permit. So if you really had to go to Virginia Law, we didn't honor your state or any permit you had, you could you could get a Virginia non-resident permit carried out way. So you would ultimately be able to carry here, but I'm just it just kills me that we're we're you know we're doing that, that we're uh not honoring all permits.

SPEAKER_00 49:38

It's it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Yeah, they gotta get these looney tunes out of government.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

What should gun owners be preparing for over the next few years in your in your It it depends on where you live, you know.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Uh we're in for a real fight here, but I think gun owners, the preparation is making sure you're keeping your eye on what's going on in your state with gun rights. Because this stuff can move quickly and don't think it can happen to you. It absolutely can't. And just being uh just being aware of it. You don't have to spend every day and every hour looking at the computer. Um but if you're a member of a gun organization, if they're worth their w wait and salt or anything, they should be telling you if there's problems coming.

SPEAKER_00 50:18

Yeah, we shoot out emails to all our members about stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

That's what you want, and that way you don't have to see you sit there with your busy life and monitor this, but you do monitor whoever you joined, the national and the state. Monitor that because that's gonna be where the um the you know the uh the British are coming kind of thing will happen. So um you gotta do that.

SPEAKER_00 50:40

Well, Philip, I I appreciate you being on the show. I appreciate you being a Second Amendment activist, and I appreciate the fact that you're staying in the fight for this long of a period of time, and I wish you luck on you know moving gun rights and gun laws uh back to that of the legal citizens in Virginia, and we're doing the same thing here in South Carolina. And so to the listening audience, I want to say thank you for the privilege of your time. Thanks for tuning in to the Liberty and Gun Rights Podcast. A big thank you to Philip Van Cleve for sharing his insight on protecting gun rights and the power of grassroots to action. If you found this episode valuable, subscribe, share it with fellow gun owners, and leave a review to help spread the message. Remember, staying informed and engaged is the best way to protect your rights. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.