Senate kills permit-free handgun bill

The Virginia Senate killed a bill that would have made Virginia one of only 13 states to allow gun-owners to carry a firearm anywhere in the state without a permit.

The bill, SB1158, would have made it legal for any person who is eligible to acquire a concealed handgun permit to carry a concealed weapon without a permit anywhere in Virginian where it is legal to have a handgun.

The 19-18 vote on Monday was split along party lines except for one Republican, Emmet Hanger of Waynesboro, who voted against the bill.

Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, said he was disappointed to see the bill defeated since it had been entered on the behalf of his organization.

“Other states have done this, and it works wherever it’s been enacted,” Van Cleave said. “This anti-gun spiel with the Democrats has the party moving in only one direction.”

Van Cleave said that the Republican party in Virginia has been trying to get a permit-less carry bill through the General Assembly for three or four years now, and it almost passed three years ago with a 20-20 tie vote.

“The tie was broken by the anti-gun lieutenant governor at the time,” Van Cleave said, attributing the defeat to financial donations to state candidates by Michael Bloomberg’s Every Town for Gun Safety organization.

“I get having strict gun-laws for criminals,” Van Cleave said. “But these are law abiding citizens.”

Andy Goddard, legislative director for Virginia Center for Public Safety, said being able to distinguish between criminals and law- abiding citizens is the purpose of gun-laws.

“These law-abiding citizens who want to carry guns are saying ‘criminals aren’t carrying permits so why should we’?” Goddard said. “They’re asking to be indistinguishable from criminals.”

Goddard compared the idea of concealed carry without a permit to a driver explaining to a police officer that they have the qualification to gain a driver’s license so, therefore they don’t need one with them while driving.

“It doesn’t even begin to be logical,” Goddard said. “And we’ve already made the qualifications so ludicrously simple that you can answer a few questions on a computer, and you can get a permit without even having touched a gun before.”

Goddard said that concealed carry typically works to give a psychological boost to the carrier but that, in practice, many people are not sufficiently trained to even get the gun out and hit their target.