Even as Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is set to declare a temporary emergency in the state of Virginia in order to declare the state capitol grounds a gun free zone, more and more Virginia towns and cities are declaring their locales Second Amendment Sanctuaries.

There are now at least 130 counties, towns, and cities in Virginia that have taken the step, including several on Tuesday.

Council members in Portsmouth voted 4-3 Tuesday evening to declare the city a “Second Amendment Constitutional City” with a crowd of gun owners in attendance.

“Tonight is about supporting not only the Second Amendment but all of our rights. They are natural rights. They’re God-given, not made by man, and no man can take them away,” said Les Gilliam, who attended the meeting.

Gilliam had been at City Hall since 5 p.m., two hours before the meeting started.

Other residents such as Sandra Walsh came later in the evening. She was with her family.

“It’s like World War II. They came for somebody else and nobody helped; then they came for somebody else and nobody, then they came for us and there was nobody there, and I want to be there,” said Walsh.

She says her granddaughter is expecting a child soon and says speaking up will help preserve the rights she and others enjoy now — for her future great-grandchild.

“If I get a seat, I’ll stay. Even at my advanced stage I have a voice, and I’m not giving up.”

Sandra Walsh gets it, and I’m glad she’s using her voice.

There were plenty of gun owners using their voices in Hopewell, Virginia on Tuesday evening as well. City council members voted 6-1 to adopt a pro-Second Amendment resolution as dozens of supporters of the resolution turned out.

Opponents of the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement claim that it’s just a rural phenomenon, but with some of the states biggest cities like Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Portsmouth signing on, clearly the movement isn’t contained only to remote counties and out-of-the-way locales.

There was a setback on Tuesday night as the city council in Lynchburg, Virginia voted 5-2 to reject a Second Amendment sanctuary resolution. Hundreds of Second Amendment supporters spoke for six hours urging the council to adopt the resolution, but in the end most of the council members, including the mayor, voted against the measure.

As disappointing as that setback was, the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement is still alive and well in Virginia, and despite the repeated attempts by anti-gun advocates to portray the movement as dangerous, the hundreds of supporters who showed up at city council meetings last night were passionate and peaceful in their opposition to Ralph Northam’s gun control agenda.