There was quite a dichotomy in the actions of two groups in Virginia earlier this week.

In Arlington, gun-rights groups bore arms and rallied against any further restrictions on their weapons.

Meanwhile, in Richmond, the local newspaper was carrying a full-page advertisement in which families of some of the students who were killed or wounded in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre called on Virginia's U.S. senators, Democrats Jim Webb and Mark Warner, to support legislation that would eliminate the so-called gun-show loophole.

While it's our opinion that gun rights are not exactly under attack by the federal government - some would argue that gun-control laws actually have gotten weaker in recent years - the Second Amendment

The Virginia Tech families have a much more factual basis for their mission. Current law allows pretty much anyone - including convicted felons and someone with the sort of mental illness that afflicted the Tech massacre gunman - to walk into a gun show and walk out with weapons, without so much as a cursory check of their criminal past or sanity.

It's difficult to imagine anyone - even the most ardent gun-rights advocate - believing that convicted killers and the criminally insane should be permitted to buy guns as if they were grabbing a loaf of bread at the neighborhood grocery store.

The Second Amendment protesters do win the prize for the most delicious irony of the day. The crowd, including at least one movement leader who suggested that shooting federal authorities might not always be such a bad thing, were allowed to carry their loaded weapons on national park land in Virginia because of a law signed by President Obama, the same man the lunatic fringe of the gun-rights crowd accuses of being on a mission to seize their guns.