GUNS
Richmond’s post-graduation mass shooting reflects America’s gun violence epidemic
This morning, a Richmond mother woke up to the yawning absence of her teenage son and husband, men whose lives were snuffed out by bullets in a mass shooting right after Huguenot High School’s graduation ceremony in downtown Richmond Tuesday afternoon. That son and brand-new graduate, Shawn Jackson, was just 18 years old when his […]
How Virginia is spending new state funding to prevent gun violence
The office of Attorney General Jason Miyares plans to hire six prosecutors and group violence intervention coordinators with the $2.6 million in grant funding it received to try to reduce gun crime. Another $5 million will go toward the extension of a hospital-based violence intervention program meant to help people escape life circumstances that led […]
Despite ceaseless slayings, Virginians keep combating gun violence
It’s difficult to maintain hope that we can reduce gun violence when so many shootings – from the spraying of bullets at a Sweet Sixteen party in Alabama, to a senseless execution of family members in Texas, to the sentencing in the slayings of a Fairfax County couple – suggest the opposite. So it’s essential […]
After applying for funding tied to red flag law, Youngkin officials vague on plans to use it
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration last fall applied for federal funding meant to help Virginia continue to implement its red flag law, a gun control measure strongly opposed by many Republican lawmakers and gun rights activists. State officials say the roughly $5 million hasn’t been formally accepted and no decisions have been made about how it […]
A heartbreaking spectacle in my native Tennessee made me appreciate Virginia all the more
It had been decades since I watched proceedings of the Tennessee Legislature as a cub reporter. What I saw in my native state this month saddened me but increased my appreciation for my state of choice, Virginia, where such embarrassments are less likely. On live television, I saw the Republican supermajority in Tennessee’s House of […]
Sturtevant changes tack
From The Virginia Mercury: “When Glen Sturtevant stood to speak to diehard gun rights supporters gathered at an American Legion post last week, he knew he had some explaining to do. A former state senator with a moderate profile who is trying to make a political comeback in a more conservative district, Sturtevant opened his […]
Youngkin signs bill creating $300 tax credit for gun safes
Firearm safety is about to get a little more affordable in Virginia after Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a bipartisan bill creating a $300 tax credit meant to reimburse people who buy gun safes or other lockable gun containers. The legislation approved by the governor last week was the only gun safety measure that passed the […]
On guns, bipartisanship clears a very low hurdle in Virginia
Young children and teenagers in Virginia have proved they can get their hands on guns and harm themselves and others. The firearms might have been right in their own homes. Against this backdrop, lawmakers in the General Assembly passed almost no new gun legislation this year to stem the ongoing carnage. It was as if […]
The correlation between guns, school violence and the erosion of American families
By Bill Pike In August of 1975, I started my first teaching job at Martinsville Junior High School in Martinsville, Virginia. Nothing in my education classes, student teaching, or orientation to the school system communicated, “Look out for students who might have a gun.” Almost fifty years later, school systems across Virginia and America are […]