Yesterday, tens of thousands of responsible gun owners gathered in Richmond, VA to protest a new set of clearly unconstitutional laws meant to limit gun ownership.

For their trouble, they were mercilessly and dishonestly smeared as “white nationalists” while the major networks all hyped up the idea that there’d be violence. In the end, there was none, because guns are inanimate objects and their mere presence in the hands of law-abiding citizens does not lead to people getting shot.

Now that their want for another Charlottesville incident didn’t materialize, that means the goalposts have to be moved and Gov. Ralph Northam is throwing them out of the stadium.

We are all thankful that today passed without incident. The teams successfully de-escalated what could have been a volatile situation. I will continue to listen to the voices of Virginians, and will do everything in my power to keep our Commonwealth safe. https://t.co/xrHxhOczvv

— Ralph Northam (@GovernorVA) January 20, 2020

Wait, what?

Northam’s ploy here is ridiculous. In the absence of violence, he wants to pretend that there would have been violence from those dastardly gun owners if his leadership hadn’t de-escalated the situation. There’s absolutely no evidence that’s true, and ample evidence to the contrary.

Northam continues his smears against 20,000+ law abiding, peaceful gun owners. He’s lying about them, again implying they are violent despite zero incidents today. He is a disgrace. https://t.co/5Yi3ylLB5s

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) January 21, 2020

Their narrative is so obvious: Dangerous, deranged "white people" with assault weapons are "storming" the capital. We are so lucky police were able to avoid violence. Mr. Northam is dishonest, and that is the nicest thing I can say about him.

— Kenton Couch (@CouchKen) January 20, 2020

Here’s the thing. There was no large police presence. In fact, some blue-checkmark liberals were complaining that they only saw a few cops standing behind a fence hanging out. There were no “teams” de-escalating matters at all because they simply weren’t needed. Ralph Northam is lying (again), and, as a result, he’s stereotyping thousands of people as violent people when they clearly aren’t.

But this is the kind of continual smearing of gun owners that we see from the left and their media gatekeepers.