Virginia gun safety laws are saving lives. Don’t weaken them.

My now-wife and I were at her wedding dress fitting in downtown Charlottesville when white supremacists attacked our community in 2017. My wife is Jewish. I was deeply concerned for her, and for the city as armed extremists chanted hate speech through the city streets, firearms brandished. It was clear the situation could turn deadly — and it did.

At the time of the Unite the Right attack, localities in Virginia were barred from passing local measures to protect their cities from armed extremism. Even after the attack on our city, the General Assembly failed to pass legislation to allow local officials to pass public safety ordinances.

Then, in 2019, 12 people were shot and killed at a Virginia Beach municipal building. The legislature called a special session to address gun violence — but it came to nothing. After that, Virginians had had enough and elected a gun sense majority to both houses that November. Over the next two years, lawmakers enacted a slew of gun safety reforms. Among these were a law allowing localities to prohibit firearms in sensitive spaces.

But despite the Unite the Right attack, despite the lives taken in Virginia Beach, and despite the recent murder of two police officers at Bridgewater College, weakening our gun laws was a top priority for the gun lobby this year. Fortunately, our gun sense majority in the Senate defeated this effort and stood up for the safety of Virginians.

Both Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County, where I live and work, have enacted gun safety ordinances, alongside 14 other communities statewide, covering more than 2.8 million Virginians. Yet, three delegates who represent my county voted to repeal, as did delegates who represent constituents from Blacksburg, Loudoun County and Petersburg. All three are communities that have enacted gun safety ordinances.

The House also voted to repeal other common sense laws passed since 2020, including a law that allows courts to temporarily disarm individuals in crisis, a reform to our background check system, a requirement that gun owners report lost or stolen weapons to police, and a prohibition on firearms at the state Capitol. Lawmakers in the Senate managed to defeat those bills, as well as other dangerous gun lobby priorities.

Gun sense lawmakers championed bills that garnered bipartisan support to establish a Virginia Center for Firearm Violence Intervention and Prevention, which would serve as a hub for data, research, coordination and funding around gun violence prevention. The state budget proposal also includes funding for gun violence interruption programs. These efforts help tackle the key roots of gun violence and address the problem with a public health approach.

“Gun violence” isn’t just in our cities or the mass shootings that make national headlines; it’s also the veteran with PTSD who takes his own life with a gun, a boy who unintentionally shoots himself after grabbing his dad’s gun from a nightstand, a woman who is shot and killed by her abuser, a person in crisis who shoots and kills themselves with a gun.

For the countless victims, survivors and communities scarred by gun violence, these debates in the halls of power and on the campaign trail are not merely for show; these laws are literally a matter of life and death.

The gun lobby tried its hardest to repeal foundational gun safety laws that keep our commonwealth safe, but because of the work of Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteers, as well as other gun safety advocates and the fervent dedication of gun sense lawmakers, they failed.

Now it’s time to look ahead

— to keep fighting for common sense gun safety measures and elect gun sense candidates at all levels, to reject the gun lobby’s attempts to gut gun safety, and to build upon the work to ensure that Virginia is a safer place for us all.