{"id":397,"date":"2019-01-30T12:19:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T16:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=397"},"modified":"2019-01-30T12:21:07","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T16:21:07","slug":"gun-violence-and-virginias-general-assembly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=397","title":{"rendered":"Gun Violence and Virginia’s General Assembly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Virginia\u2019s General Assembly<\/a> this session has already killed some important gun violence prevention legislation.\u00a0Let me say that again: Republicans in Virginia\u2019s legislature have blocked passage of popular policies that would help prevent gun violence without also interfering with the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Senate Courts of Justice Committee killed\u00a0SB1034<\/a>, which would have created a\u00a0Class 1 Misdemeanor<\/a> for purchasing more than one handgun in a 30 day period.\u00a0\u00a0Since it would have exempted several classes of gun purchasers, including anyone with a valid concealed handgun permit and anyone buying a handgun in a private sale, it\u2019s not clear how this would interfere with the right of any law-abiding Virginia resident\u2019s right to \u201ckeep and bear arms.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Besides the obvious point that the Second Amendment says nothing about just how many arms a citizen has a right to \u201ckeep and bear,\u201d I personally wonder why anyone would want to purchase more than a dozen weapons of any kind in a given year.\u00a0\u00a0But since most citizens qualify for concealed permits, and any citizen could make as many private purchases as time permits, it seems that this legislation would have one important effect: making mass purchases of firearms for transport to states with more restrictive firearms laws slightly more difficult.\u00a0\u00a0This does, in fact, happen<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0And\u00a0Virginia<\/a> can help stop it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

SB1034 would not end this kind of gun trafficking forever.  Nothing ever will, really (though a Federal gun violence prevention regime with uniform regulations would help).  Just making it more difficult would require a system that alerted County Sheriffs and the Circuit Courts of outlier purchasers, and that runs into the desire of armed citizens to hide from the government whether they own firearms at all. But a person who has never before purchased a firearm in Virginia showing up wanting to buy 20 pistols in a couple of weeks should raise eyebrows.  This won\u2019t happen soon, but we said the same thing about drinking age and drunk driving not so long ago.  Maybe this is an area where we can go back to an old method: give County Sheriffs a role. I bet every Sheriff you ask can give you a list of people in his or her county who should probably not have a gun handy.  In the US we have no elected official who is closer to the people, and this may make Sheriffs the best gatekeeper on this.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The General Assembly also killed legislation that would\u00a0prohibit sales of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds<\/a> and\u00a0raise the minimum age for legal purchase of a firearm<\/a> from a licensed gun dealer.\u00a0\u00a0Both bills would also have redefined \u201cassault firearm\u201d to mean a weapon with a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds.\u00a0\u00a0These policies also look like logical ways to reduce gun violence and its impact when it does happen without materially affecting the right of law-abiding citizens to \u201ckeep and bear arms.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0After all, we prohibit some forms of dangerous speech.\u00a0\u00a0Why is prohibition of certain types of dangerous firearms?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Senate did kill\u00a0SB1158<\/a>, what\u00a0some call Constitutional Carry<\/a>, 19-18 on Monday.\u00a0This is a big defeat for the \u201canyone can carry, anywhere, anytime, open or concealed<\/a>\u201d lobby.\u00a0\u00a0Republican Senators\u00a0Emmet Hanger<\/a> and\u00a0Dick Saslaw<\/a>, to their credit, voted nay.\u00a0\u00a0Two other Republicans (Stanley<\/a> and\u00a0Wagner<\/a>) abstained or missed the vote.\u00a0\u00a0Supporters of Constitutional Carry believe that government cannot limit Second Amendment rights by increasing the cost of exercising them, for instance with sales taxes on firearms, requiring permits or training, or liability regulations.\u00a0\u00a0They argue that it matters by citing Vermont as a low-crime state that has never restricted carrying firearms and suggesting that both deterrent and responsive effects would reduce crime under less restrictive concealed and open carry laws.\u00a0Trouble is that\u00a0Johns Hopkins<\/a>data\u00a0don\u2019t support this claim<\/a>, and in\u00a0fact Constitutional Carry may increase crime<\/a>.\u00a0It has traditionally struck most people as intuitive that a person walking down the street with a gun might well be up to no good and should be reported to police.\u00a0\u00a0Constitutional Carry proponents want to normalize the presence of firearms in our routine lives \u2013 they want us to get used to seeing guns everywhere.\u00a0\u00a0Evidence suggests that this would not reduce crime by deterring criminals or ensuring rapid response, but it would without a doubt have one effect: make it easier for the bad guy to walk into a school, church, bank, sports bar, or government building without raising alarms.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And one key piece of gun violence legislation remains alive.\u00a0\u00a0HB2504<\/a> would make possession of a firearm by persons subject to a\u00a0permanent protective order<\/a> for subjecting another person to violence, force, or threat a\u00a0Class 6 Felony<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0This kind of \u201cRed Flag\u201d law makes all the sense in the world: people who have demonstrated violent behavior toward others should not have a right to possess weapons after due process has confirmed their violent behavior.\u00a0As of now this bill sits in the\u00a0House Courts of Justice Committee<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Click the link and if your Delegate sits on this Committee I urge you to let them know how you stand on this.\u00a0\u00a0Virginia Citizens Defense League members\u00a0definitely will<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No exercise of any right comes without cost.  Exercise of free speech and association is not free \u2013 we have to spend time if nothing else.  My own exercise of the right to express myself on this blog costs something \u2013 web hosting is not free, and government rightly limits the scope of my right to political expression and constrains incitement to violence or defamation and libel.  Expansion of my media empire would require further costs and conformance to regulations of many kinds, from employment to environmental.  Those who wish to exercise other rights must also pay to do so \u2013 if your name isn\u2019t Miranda<\/a>, you probably don\u2019t get SCOTUS certiori without an expensive lawyer.  It\u2019s not clear why exercise of Second Amendment rights should cost nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any event, we need to push the General Assembly to pass legislation that helps reduce gun violence and keep firearms out of the hands of bad guys with guns.  The law should require a thorough criminal background check for all gun sales or transfers, and no person who cannot legally purchase a beer should be able to legally purchase a firearm.  We need to find a way to limit possession of weapons with high muzzle velocity and\/or allow rapid fire of large amounts of ammunition, including prohibition of bump stocks and other aftermarket devices.  We need to hold people liable when others use their weapons to commit crimes, just as we hold the bartender accountable for damage caused by a drunk driver after serving a customer too much alcohol.  And we need to lift the ban on research into the health effects on gun ownership and whether expanding gun possession and public carrying of firearms causes crime or helps reduce it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Virginia\u2019s General Assembly this session has already killed some important gun violence prevention legislation.\u00a0Let me say that again: Republicans in Virginia\u2019s legislature have blocked passage of popular policies that would help prevent gun violence without also interfering with the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.\u00a0 The Senate Courts of Justice Committee killed\u00a0SB1034, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":399,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions\/399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}