VA House Committee Passes Firearm Storage Law, Handgun Purchase Limit

A firearms inspector poses for a photograph with seized and handed in revolvers at the sto
TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty

The House of Delegates’ Public Safety Committee on Friday passed a firearm store law and a bill limiting the number of handguns Virginians can purchase, among other gun controls.

WHSV reports the gun controls, “almost all… passed on a 13-9 party line vote,” with the Democrats voting for them and Republicans against.

Universal background checks were among the controls passed. Such checks criminalize a neighbor who sells a five-shot revolver to a lifelong neighbor without first getting government permission via a background check. While making criminals out of the law-abiding, they do nothing to stop gang members and street criminals from selling stolen guns to one another in dark alleys, drug houses, and parking lots.

Del. Mark Levine (D-45th Dist.) boasted the committee also passed a bill allowing local municipalities to enact gun bans for certain areas whether the state legislature enacts such bans or not. The bill particularly allows local municipalities to ban concealed carry in parks and public buildings. In other words, the bill, should it pass, would allow local municipalities to ban carry by those who have gone through the legal process of acquiring a license to carry for self-defense.

Ironically, the May 31, 2019, Virginia Beach shooting occurred in a building where employees were banned from carrying guns for self-defense. The Crime Prevention Research Center reported: “Virginia Beach bans employees from being able to carry guns. In addition, while it was indeed possible for a civilian to enter the ‘Operations Building’ where the attack occurred, the ‘Operations Building,’ as its name suggests, was a building where virtually only employees would be in.”

But one city employee ignored the ban, carrying in two .45 caliber handguns into the gun free area in order and inflicting death on the unarmed.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

 

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