Gun Violence
Gun violence has shattered too many Virginia families. I know sensible gun violence prevention legislation will help end this epidemic. I am a staunch supporter of the bump stock ban, keeping guns away from domestic abusers, and expanding background checks for those looking to purchase guns. Stopping these tragedies is within our grasp if we have the courage to enact these common sense reforms.
Claire Boine, an expert in gun violence from Boston University, has done extensive research that found the most effective legislative measures in preventing gun violence. These measures included:
1. Prohibiting people who have been convicted of violent misdemeanors from possessing guns;
2. Giving authorities the discretion to reject applications for concealed carry permits; and
3. Enacting universal background checks.
Adopted as a package, the overall homicide rate can be reduced by approximately 36% per year, which for Virginia would be 124 people saved every year. Our Democratic majority worked diligently in 2020 and 2021 to prioritize and pass these life-saving measures. Now it is our duty to protect these laws, especially as some have “sunsets” and need to be renewed to stay in effect. These are common sense measures; they save lives, and as our country struggles to deal with the consistent threat of gun violence, the stakes have never been higher.
Each year, approximately 2/3 of all gun deaths in the United States are due to suicide, with an average of 61 deaths per day. In fact, in Virginia, guns are involved in 56% of all suicides. This is a health crisis. Virginia passed a ‘Red Flag Law,’ or Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO), in 2020, which allows law enforcement as well as family members to step in and petition a court to temporarily remove firearms from an individual showing signs of harming themselves or others. Studies performed in other states with ERPO laws have shown that these laws have been effective in reducing the firearm suicide rate and Virginia should hopefully see a similar reduction in coming years.
In addition, intimate partner violence and gun violence in our country are inextricably linked, impacting millions of people. Abusers with access to firearms are five times more likely to kill their victims. Each month, an average of 52 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner. In more than half of the mass shootings that have occurred in the past decade, the perpetrator shot a current or former intimate partner or family member during the incident. As of 2020, Virginia now prohibits anyone under a permanent protective order from possessing a firearm throughout the duration of that order and requires them to surrender any guns they own within 24 hours of being served. Keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers is critical to stopping their violence.
Mass shootings are a national tragedy, and one that keeps repeating. Hundreds die every year in preventable attacks. Parents are losing children, spouses go out to the supermarket and don’t come home, friends die at music festivals and churches and right outside their homes. Not even schools are safe. An estimated 3 million children in the US are exposed to shootings per year. In fact, alarmingly, a study by the New England Journal of Medicine found that the leading cause of death in the year 2020 among children and teens in the United States were firearms. Mass shootings on school grounds are not a new problem, but they are becoming increasingly frequent. We are seeing life after life end, watching innocent children being murdered time after time, because our gun violence prevention laws have not been strong enough to protect them.
In the wake of these preventable shootings, we must remain committed to cutting out the root of the problem. It is for that reason that we must completely ban assault weapons, both fully automatic and semiautomatic, and limit magazine capacity. These are common sense measures; no responsible person needs to own weapons designed specifically for war and killing human beings. Currently, Virginia requires a concealed handgun permit to carry magazines with more than 20 rounds in some urban, public areas. This includes our district. However, much of the state has no restrictions and nowhere in Virginia is capacity actually limited. AR-15s, the semi-automatic rifles used in most mass shootings in the United States, are also still legal in Virginia. House Democrats introduced a bill in 2020 that would have banned all assault weapons, including AR-15s, and I was proud to vote for the bill, though it did not make it through the Senate.
Ghost guns, privately made, untraceable firearms, are another severe issue that Virginia has started to address, though there is still work to be done. Plastic guns are illegal in Virginia, but 3D printed guns are not, and are more accessible than ever. People are able to 3D print fully illegal guns or violate Virginia’s gun licensing system by printing guns that require registration and never reporting them. Printed guns do not have a commercial serial number and the state struggles to identify the people who own these guns and contain any threat they may pose. The threat of ghost guns will likely only grow as more people access the technology and Virginia must pass laws to address this uniquely modern facet of gun violence prevention before it expands further.
In 2020 and 2021, Virginia passed monumental gun violence prevention laws, which include implementing background checks for all firearm sales, limiting individuals to only buying one gun per month, and expanding laws that penalize endangering minors by leaving out loaded, unsecured guns. We were also able to give localities more power to pass ordinances governing the possession, carrying, storage, and transportation of firearms, giving them far greater ability to address gun violence at the local level. I am proud to have voted for all these bills, but they were close votes, split along party lines. Republicans introduced multiple bills aimed at repealing these laws in 2022. They were unsuccessful, thankfully, but it is clear the progress we have made is under attack. I remain committed to passing and defending common-sense gun violence prevention legislation that will save lives in our community and throughout Virginia.
