Emily Miller, the chief investigative reporter for Washington, D.C.'s Fox affiliate WTTG, told the crowd at a January 19 gun rights rally in Richmond, Virginia that the District “is not part of America” and told gun advocates in attendance that she is part of “this fight that we're all in.”

Miller was one of several speakers at a rally organized by the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), an extremist gun rights organization. VCDL participates in an annual Lobby Day event held each year at the Virginia State Capitol on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Many of VCDL's supporters attend the event with openly carried handguns and assault weapons, which is legal in Virginia. Advocates for gun safety also hold a separate rally each year.

While flanked by a man armed with an AR-15 style assault weapon and an openly carried handgun, Miller told the crowd, “It's great to be in Virginia, which is part of America where you recognize the Second Amendment. I came from D.C. this morning, which is not part of America, because they don't recognize the Second Amendment.”

Miller also threw her lot in with the VCDL advocates, telling the armed crowd, “I don't call myself pro-gun, I call myself pro-Second Amendment, because a gun is a tool and this fight that we're all in, this fight is for freedom, the freedom for the Bill of Rights.”

VCDL advocates for far-right positions on gun regulation, including questioning the need for background checks on any gun sale. On its 2015 legislative tracking website, VCDL “strongly” opposes bills that would “Prohibit[] a person who is subject to a protective order from possessing a firearm,” and, “Prohibit[] a person who has been convicted of stalking, sexual battery, assault and battery of a family or household member, brandishing a firearm, or two or more convictions of assault and battery from purchasing, possessing, or transporting a firearm.”

VCDL also opposes legislation that would revoke a person's concealed carry permit if they are delinquent on child support payments, arguing, “A person who has fallen on financial hard times should not have their lives endangered by having their right to self-defense abrogated.”

After Lobby Day 2014, VCDL published a newsletter suggesting that violence against the government is an “option” if VCDL did not achieve its goals through the legislative process. The gun group also published a racially charged article in a 2011 newsletter that gave advice on how one might defend themselves from “a group of twenty young urban thugs” who are “yelling, 'kill whitey.'”