Hundreds of protesters rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend to mark the anniversary of last year’s fatal white supremacist violence, but demonstrators also criticized the huge police presence. Authorities banned most weapons from the protest site, with the exception of guns. While white nationalists rallied in Washington DC.
Sputnik has discussed this with Robert Spitzer, political science researcher at State University of New York College at Cortland.
Sputnik: Ahead of this year’s rallies, Virginia declared a state of emergency and banned a range of items that could be used as weapons, but not guns with respect to the Second Amendment. What is your take on this?
Robert Spitzer: In terms of Virginia, that's under Virginia state law. So there are some limitations in terms of what local police can do to minimize the presence of firearms.
And I think there are lots of problems with the Virginia state law that would allow people to carry firearms even under some circumstances in a public place, or at a public demonstration, or any public event. And if you go around the 50 states, you’ll find a number of states that have fairly liberal laws that allow people to carry guns in public places and in the modern era I don’t think it’s a very good idea.But these laws do exist, and probably Virginia is among them, but that’s why, one reason I think, why we saw a very heavy police presence and some of the counter protesters, the people who oppose the white nationalists, were complaining rather bitterly about the heavy police presence, saying they felt threatened by the police and that I thought was a terrible overreaction.
It is certainly understandable that there was a heavy police presence, partly because of the possibility that somebody might be carrying guns, might intentionally or even accidentally discharge a firearm which would be very, very bad.
That didn’t happen, but better to see a heavier police presence than what happened last year. In fact, as a result