Militia – C-VILLE Weekly

August 12 bills killed

After white supremacists invaded Charlottesville with violent clashes that left activist Heather Heyer dead and the community traumatized, legislators carried bills to the General Assembly to give localities more muscle in avoiding such gatherings in the future. Attorney General Mark Herring also wrote a couple of bills to combat white supremacist violence—to no avail.

Senator Creigh Deeds

Allow Charlottesville and Albemarle to prohibit the carrying of firearms in public.
Prohibit impersonating armed forces personnel.
Prohibit wearing clothing or carrying weaponry commonly associated with military combat at permitted events.

Delegate David Toscano

Allow Charlottesville and Albemarle to prohibit carrying firearms with high-capacity magazines.
Allow any locality to prohibit carrying firearms at permitted events.
Localities may remove war memorials.

Attorney General Mark Herring

Define domestic terrorism as violence committed with the intent of instilling fear based on one’s race, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation. The state police superintendent could designate domestic terrorism organizations.
Paramilitary activity is unlawful if done with intent to intimidate with firearms, explosives or incendiary devices.

In brief

Power-less

Dominion Energy says it’s restored power to 42,000 customers in Albemarle following the nor’easter that hit the area starting March 1. At press time 721 were still without electricity.

“We’re like a mosquito on the giant’s ankle.”—Kay Ferguson about anti-Dominion protesters

ACC accolades

Virginia secured the No. 1 seed and won its final home game of the season against Notre Dame March 3. Tony Bennett was named ACC Coach of the Year, Isaiah Wilkins was named Defensive Player of the Year and De’Andre Hunter was named Sixth Man of the Year.

NBC29 anchor dies

Sunrise and noon anchor Ken Jefferson, 65, died unexpectedly March 4 after a brief illness. According to NBC29, he began his broadcast career with a pirate radio station as a boy. He worked at WHIO in Dayton, Ohio, and WWSB in Sarasota, Florida, before coming to Charlottesville in 2011.

Free tampons in jail

The General Assembly passed a bill February 27 that provides free feminine hygiene products to women incarcerated in Virginia’s prisons and jails. Bills to eliminate the sales tax on menstrual supplies for the non-incarcerated died in House committees.

Cop-car escapee pleads guilty

Matthew W. Carver, 26, whose six-week crime spree last summer included breaking into a Crozet woman’s house and stealing her car, multiple B&Es and kicking out the window to escape from a patrol car while handcuffed and shackled, pleaded guilty to 21 felony counts February 28 in Albemarle Circuit Court. He’ll be sentenced June 6.

Not just talking turkey

When a tractor trailer overturned on Rockfish Gap Turnpike February 25, Albemarle police said on their Facebook page that several turkeys got loose and “enjoyed a night under the Crozet stars” until an animal control officer picked them up the next day and “safely wrangle[d] the rafter into a pretty sweet new ride courtesy of the ACPD.” A rafter is a group of turkeys.

Andy Goddard has been going to the General Assembly since 2008, the year after his son was shot four times in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. In his 11th year monitoring the legislature and how it deals with mass murders and guns, not much has changed.

“It’s the same old thing,” says Goddard, who’s the legislative director for the Virginia Center for Public Safety. “The one subcommittee in the House that kills all the gun bills used to be 4-1 Republican majority.” Now, with last fall’s Democratic insurgency in the House that brought it to a 49-51 minority, the Militia, Police and Public Safety subcommittee that handily dispatches anything that could restrict gun ownership added another Dem and is now 5-2. “Ludicrous,” says Goddard.

House Democratic Leader David Toscano agrees and says the subcommittee makeup is “unproportional” to the nearly even split of the House.

Subcommittee No. 1 includes southern Albemarle’s delegate, Matt Fariss, a Republican from Rustburg. Fariss did not return phone calls from C-VILLE Weekly to explain why measures such as requiring family day care centers to lock up guns after a 4-year-old boy killed himself in Orange last spring or banning bump stocks—the device used in Las Vegas to slaughter 58 people and wound hundreds—failed.

“Every year we see this,” says Gay Einstein, who heads the Charlottesville Coalition for Gun Violence Prevention. “Bump stocks—really?”

Her group started after the December 14, 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Connecticut. The inability to nudge Virginia legislators to support gun safety measures is depressing, says Einstein, despite increased interest in preventing mass murders. The group took a bus of 32 people down to Richmond in January to lobby.

Goddard says 113 firearms-related bills were introduced in the General Assembly this session, and his organization supported 83 of them. Of those, “81 have gone down,” says Goddard.

One of the two survivors is a bill state Senator Creigh Deeds carried that would put restrictions on gun possession on minors who were involuntarily ordered to undergo mental health treatment.

The other? A “stop gun violence” license plate. “The gun boys got really upset and threw everything at that one,” says Goddard, who wonders how gun violence can be stopped when legislators “can’t even abide the words on a license plate.”

Despite the steadfast defeat of firearms restrictions in Richmond, in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, high school slayings and the national student-led outrage, Toscano is calling upon fellow legislators to reopen the conversation. “There are three items worthy of discussion,” he says.

First, banning bump stocks. Second, banning the sale of assault weapons to people under 21. “If we could have prevented the sale of an AR-15, the Florida shootings would not have occurred,” he says. And third, a “gun prevention protective order,” which would allow a court to remove guns from someone deemed mentally ill and dangerous “like the guy in Florida,” a measure that has support in conservative and liberal camps, says Toscano.

He knows he needs help from across the aisle to get anything done as this year’s session winds down, and on February 27, he says, “I’m going to challenge Republicans to join us.”

Despite the steadfast defeat of firearms restrictions in Richmond, in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, high school slayings and the national student-led outrage, House Democratic Leader David Toscano is calling upon fellow legislators to reopen the conversation.