Gun Advocates Hit Virginia, DC, in Double-Barreled Protest

(April 19) -- Protesting what they perceive as a growing threat to the Second Amendment, armed gun-rights activists gathered today in Virginia as their firearms-free brethren congregated in nearby Washington, D.C.

Thanks to a law signed by President Barack Obama, a few dozen protesters were allowed to gather at two public parks in Virginia carrying a variety of unconcealed weapons, including rifles and pistols.

"We are done backing up," former Alabama Minuteman leader Mike Vanderboegh told the crowd assembled at Fort Hunt Park. "Not one more inch."

Demonstrators carrying their weapons rally at Gravelly Point in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, April 19.

Olivier Douliery, Abaca Press / MCT

Demonstrators carry their weapons at a rally in Arlington, Va., citing Second Amendment issues as their cause for protest.

Meanwhile, across the Potomac River, upward of 2,000 activists attended the Second Amendment March on the National Mall. Organizers had hoped for several thousand attendees.

"We're in a war. The other side knows they are at war, because they started it," Larry Pratt, president of Gun Owners of America, told the Washington rally. "They are coming for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They are coming for everything because they are a bunch of socialists."

Organizers of the Washington event said they chose the date to commemorate the anniversary of the Revolutionary War battles at Lexington and Concord in 1775. However, it also happened to fall on the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh, a former member of an anti-government militia.

Oath Keepers, one of the organizations that had originally sponsored the protests, withdrew its official support of the armed portion of the day's events, citing the inflammatory rhetoric used by some of the individuals involved.

"Oath Keepers as a organization feels that a confrontational stance, such as has been published, places this event, in public perception, outside the terms of our stated and published mission," the group said on its website.

Vanderboegh, for instance, condoned throwing bricks through the windows of any lawmaker who had voted to pass health care reform.

"I'm calling on the government to understand that there are going to be consequences to pushing people like us any farther back," Vanderboegh said at today's event.

Rhetorical flourishes aside, however, the protests proved to be peaceful affairs at which gun owners expressed their First Amendment rights in support of preserving the Second Amendment.

"I came here to threaten no one," protester Bob Wright told WTHR news. "I came here to remind everyone what the course of our country was in the past and what it will be in the future."