breath and understanding we re all concerned about what s going on in this country. everyone can feel it. people are hungry, people are scared, and we need to start working together as human beings and stop labeling and dividing. reporter: grew griffin, cnn, austin, texas. let s big deeper into some of these groups. john avalon joins me, author of wing nuts and the lunatic fringe is hijacking america. you were at the two rallies in virginia and d.c. today. how are the groups that were rallying today different from the tea party movement which held rallies last week? they re quite different. these are second amendment rights activists. primarily. the tax day protests were of a different vein. but they come out of the same broad anxiety we re seeing. taxes are down, yet the tax day protesters felt the tax burden was increasing this year. in this case, actually the reason that one of the armed rallies was able to be held in virginia on national parkland was because of a bill signe
i think people need to start sitting down, taking a deep breath and understanding we re all concerned about what s going on in this country. everyone can feel it. people are hungry, people are scared, and we kneneed to start working together as human beings and stop labelling and dividing. let s dig deeper into some of these groups. john avalon joins me, author of wing nut s and the lunatic fringe is hijacking america. how are the groups that were rallying today different from the tea party movement which held rallies last week? they re quite different. these are second amendment rights activists. but they come out of the same broad anxiety we re seeing. tax day is down but they felt the tax burden was increasing this year. in this case, actually the reason that one of the armed rallies was able to be held in virginia on national parkland was because of a bill signed by
virginia and d.c. today. how are the groups that were rallying today different from the tea party movement which held rallies last week? they re quite different. these are second amendment rights activists. primarily. the tax day protests were of a different vein. but they come out of the same broad anxiety we re seeing. taxes are down, yet the tax day protesters felt the tax burden was increasing this year. in this case, actually the reason that one of the armed rallies was able to be held in virginia on national parkland was because of a bill signed by president obama. in many cases what we re seeing is a phantom menace. the evidence of fright-wing politics. people very afraid in a time of anxiety and economic distress, willing to believe the worst in their government. believing they re people trying to undermine this constitutional republic. they re being fed a steady diet of fear and hate and politics and it has a trickle down effect as we learned 15 years ago. some saw the fac