Daniel Almond, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, has organized a group to “muster outside D.C.” on today with several dozen other self-proclaimed patriots, all of them armed. They intend to make history as the first people to take their guns to a demonstration in a national park. The Washington Post says the the Virginia rally is deliberately being held just a few miles from the Capitol and the White House.
Almond plans to have his pistol loaded and openly carried, his rifle unloaded and slung to the rear, a bandoleer of magazines containing ammunition draped over his shoulder. The Atlanta area real estate agent organized the rally because he is upset about health-care reform, climate control, bank bailouts, drug laws, and what he sees as President Obama’s insistence on and the Democratic Congress’s capitulation to a “totalitarian socialism” that tramples individual rights. “Many of the speakers have really threatened violence, and it’s a real threat to the rule of law,” says Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence “They are calling health care and taxes that have been duly enacted by a democratically elected Congress tyrannical, and they feel they have a right to confront that individually.”