Virginia Tech parents mark new gun laws

When Virginia lawmakers pass sweeping new gun control laws in the coming days, it will mark the culmination of nearly 13 years of often thankless work for two parents whose children were shot in one of the country’s worst mass shootings.

Lori Haas and Andrew Goddard started pressing lawmakers to enact new gun laws shortly after a gunman killed 32 people and wounded more than a dozen others at Virginia Tech in 2007. Their children were in French class together and were both shot but survived.

Haas and Goddard have been Virginia’s most visible guncontrol lobbyists for years, but until recently had little to show for their work. Now they are helping to shepherd through the most substantive new gun laws the state has ever passed.

When a House committee recently advanced a series of gun bills that in past years had failed with little discussion, Goddard said it felt overwhelming.

‘‘I’m actually trembling,’’ Goddard said.

‘‘I’ve never been on the winning side.’’

Year after the year the pair would come to the Capitol and press lawmakers to consider tightening the state’s gun laws, something the Republican majority almost always rejected.

Small moral victories were rare in a state where the Republican majority, and even some Democrats, viewed gun rights as sacrosanct. It was an accomplishment just to get a lawmaker to pay attention during a conversation.

Those days are now long gone. Haas and Goddard have lawmakers’ full attention and hardly a day has gone by without some kind of gun control measure advancing in either chamber. –

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