It’s Going Down, arguably the largest Antifa website on the internet, has published a lengthy op-ed in support of gun rights from a Virginia militant leftist planning to attend the Second Amendment rally in Richmond this Monday.

The anonymously penned piece titled “With Neither Tyrants Nor Fascists: An Anarchist Analysis Of The Growing Fight Against Anti-Gun Legislation In Virginia,” makes a surprisingly reasonable argument for why they oppose anti-gun legislation and mocks the theories that Antifa is planning to go to the rally just to instigate problems.

On January 20, defenders of the Second Amendment intend to take over Richmond’s “Lobby Day” in support of the Second Amendment. The rally is expected to draw tens of thousands of people, many from militias across the country — as well as at least one Antifa group from the state. The group claims that they intend to support the Second Amendment and aren’t going to protest against the patriotic Americans who are standing up for their right to protect themselves and those they love.

The author began the article by describing growing up in Virginia and how being around guns is a natural part of life. “Here, they are as divisive as they are ubiquitous. Guns are pulled out at parties and argued about over dinner. They are bought and sold at pawn shops, advertised on billboards, given away in raffles, traded informally, gifted, stolen, won in poker games, and even sold on Facebook. Anyone over 18 with a valid driver’s license and clean record can rent one at a shooting range or buy one from their neighbor,” they explained.

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They note that meat hunted with guns is “used for survival, shared between neighbors, or donated to the elderly,” but that many residents of the state “know someone impacted by their violence: someone who gets into fights, a bystander, a victim of domestic violence or depression or the police. Many have family, friends, and acquaintances serving long sentences who have been criminalized for their proximity to guns and guns are everywhere.”

The piece goes on to take aim squarely at the Democratic Party for attempting to trample the rights of their citizens.

“It has felt surreal and even laughable to many Virginians that a newly Democrat-dominated state government might push through the criminalization of gun possession with proposed sweeping partial ​bans and ​regulations​. But this is 2019 in Virginia, and these days we are used to things being very absurd and very surreal. The Democrats who are proposing these laws rode in on a wave of massive structural changes, redistricting, and also growing anger at Dominion Energy’s corporate influence. The gateway to the south, the gateway to the north. Virginia exists between a suburban future and the pastoral farming past, at the intersection of old world bigotry and patronage and hyper-modern capitalism,” the author lamented.

It goes on to ponder where exactly “non-traditional” gun owners fit in to defending this right, which is something more typically associated with right-wing activism than left.

“Into this, where do we non-traditional gun owners fit in? Who advocates for poor gun owners, and those who happen to not be white, or straight, or conservative? Only ourselves. We cannot align with a Democratic political cadre attempting to pass legislation that will felonize us and endanger us to further violence by the police and the Right. And we cannot stand meekly behind the established 2A leadership, keeping quiet as they bicker and rant and platform white nationalists. We know full well that our presence will be tokenized when it is useful and demonized when it is not. Their goals are rooted in a long legacy of white vigilantism and State terror. We will not find friends there,” the author wrote. “The​ prospect of joining either side is enough to make us want to bury our guns in the back yard and open up a book while the talking heads tear each other up on Fox and Friends.”

They next took aim at the claims that Antifa is planning to attend the event to cause problems, describing the fears as “alarmist” and writing them off.

“Into this madness, why should we add our own bodies? The Democrats expect us to act as their thugs, even as they promise to prosecute us for defending ourselves. To the Right, it is a given that we are funded by Bloomberg himself, or trained by shadowy forces to make them look ridiculous or violent. We just live here, we own guns and don’t want to see any more of our friends attacked by tech bro neo-Nazis or jealous and rejected men,” the author wrote. “We own guns because we grew up around them, because the threats we face are real and present, and because we encounter them stumbling out of the breweries to stomp out the closest person they see sleeping on the street. And so we feel little love for either of these gangs of bussed-in protesters. This is our home, we’ll live here on the 19th and the 21​st​ too.”

The essay concludes by explaining that the left should also use guns to protect themselves and that the state should not be the only ones with guns.

“We want our freedom in every sense of the word. And since we will fight for it, we want our guns too. To be quite blunt, a gun is the the only check on this that you can hold in your hand. So we’ll continue to hold them, whether they’re legal or not,” they wrote.