The first veto from Virginia’s Governor McAuliffe was on a gun bill that sought to clarify wording on transport by gun owners without concealed carry permits. Even the media notes that this veto is meant to signal to gun control advocates that he’s taking a hardcore anti-gun line rather than addressing some legitimate concern on gun possession.
Virginia Governor’s “Screw You” to Gun Owners
What’s sad is if you read the comments, there is one guy who is clearly a gun owner, yet he voted for McAuliffe. And now he regrets it. Seriously? The guy seems very knowledgeable about VA gun law, yet he is surprised at this? WTF! Gun owners are our own worst enemy.
33% of Virginia gun owners voted for McAuliffe. Virginia can pound salt for all I care.
Agreed, they’ve no one but themselves to blame. At least it’s not losing the house, but it may very well put a damper on our plans for lifetime permits and/or all-state reciprocity for a while, both of which are likely to come up again next year.
Be thankful he can only serve one term.
Unfortunately we have lots of gun owners like that in PA, too. And everywhere, really.
How many gun owners are there in the US? Like 100 million? If every gun owner voted for his or her gun rights on election day, gun control would instantly die.
Agreed, no one to blame but themselves.
Cuccinelli was just as bad of a choice. If any gun owners wanted a real candidate, they should have voted Libertarian.
I’m afraid the Libertarian wasn’t all that good a candidate either. It was a sucky election.
You mean the candidate that was funded by Obama?
And Cooch wouldn’t have vetoed this bill. So no, he was not as bad
People like you are the problem.
We had no libertarian candidate, just someone masquerading as one- and doing a poor job at it, at that.
The time to select better candidates is the primary.
In the general election you have to suck it up and at least vote against someone.
If you value your gun rights, McAuliffe was worth voting against, and the only way to effectively do that was to hold your nose and pull the lever for Cooch.
As for Sarvis and gun rights… THis is the clearest statement he had I could find:
On the issue of gun control, where would you stand on other things like background checks or closing the gun show loophole?
A lot of the issues are red herrings or canards where the gun control law don’t necessarily affect the level of gun violence and they burden the law-abiding gun owners, so I really want to focus on evidence-based policies. The best way to reduce gun violence is to end the drug war.
http://wamu.org/news/13/09/26/q_a_robert_sarvis_libertarian_candidate_for_virginia_governor
He didn’t say he would oppose any of those measures, did he?
None of the three were great candidates. IMO the only reasonable choice as a gun owner was to pull the lever for Cooch.
You voted for the turd sandwich now enjoy the taste fools.
There is too much mud-throwing at Virginians, many of whom didn’t vote for this guy, and are stuck with him. His veto might have been payback for the electoral support, we haven’t lost much either. So drop the vitriol- it isn’t helpful or beneficial. “If we don’t hang together, we certainly will hang separately.”
^^^THIS^^^
If, as someone above says, 33% of Virginia gun owners voted for McAuliffe, that means 66% didn’t. Why should those people “pound sand” because of the actions of people they’ve never met? Collective responsibility, or some such?
Not everyone is a single issue voter. People need to get over it.
There was not a good candidate in that election. Period. Sarvis might have been good, but there were some strong allegations that he was a Democrat funded spoiler. Cuccinelli was a crap candidate – good on guns but not much else. McAuliffe was also heavily funded by Michael Bloomberg, and was able to outspend Cuccinelli by almost $18 million.
Not everyone is a single issue voter. People need to get over it.
As Sebastian says, a politician’s views on gun control are a good litmus test for many other things. If a politician doesn’t trust me with a measly 9mm with 15 rounds then they certainly won’t trust me with anything else significant.
People who claim to be for gun rights but vote against the issue need to re-examine their priorities. Anti-gun politicians want you dead or in a cage. The laws they are passing, right now, in states like CT, NY, and even CO have serious criminal penalties. Even a misdemeanor will whack many middle class type people pretty hard — that arrest and conviction record will last forever. Good luck finding a job. Many of these new laws are felonies.
Cuccinelli was a SoCo, but he wasn’t talking about charging gay sex in private between consenting adults as a felony. McAuliffe, if he gets the chance, will absolutely make as many aspects of gun ownership a felony as he possibly can. Thank goodness the D’s don’t have the VA legislature.
I don’t vote solely on the gun rights issue, but it is a litmus test to get in the door. If you aren’t “A” rated on the issue — I’ll pull the lever for the opponent. If both are solid on the gun rights issue then I’ll choose based on other criteria.
I am over it. I don’t live in VA so not really my problem.
The bottom line is, if you want to continue to enjoy your Second Amendment rights, you need to be a single issue voter. Even though the Republicans are dumb as hell, they will deliver on gun rights.
If one is tempted to pull the lever for a Democrat, remember the demonizing vitriol aimed at gun owners from that side of the political spectrum. It’s not just that they disagree with us, they loathe and despise us. Why would you support people that consider you a redneck psychopath you and want to strip you of your rights?
Amen to that.
I’m still stunned that anyone anywhere would vote for McAuliffe. Of course he is rabidly anti-gun. He’s like a caricature of a corrupt Democrat.
Too many materialistic yuppies in NoVA who put things like a woman’s right to choose, supporting the federal growth that keeps them employed, and creating more walkable neighborhoods WAY above gun rights.
If you want exponential growth in your state, you shouldn’t act surprised when the migrants start to take over politically. I hate to see it as a former 7 year resident and someone who still has connections there.
Of course, what gets overlooked is the fact that, due to the way Virginia’s constitution and case law precedences has racked up, McAuliffe’s veto is nearly meaningless in terms of practical outcomes — except VCDL will chortle with joy as they help fund repeated lawsuits against bigoted (i.e., Hampton Roads, Richmond, and NoVA cities) police departments who interpret this decision as meaning they can arrest people for carrying a gun in a closed (but unlocked) glove box.
The current statute is ambiguous, but the weight of evidence that Virginia courts are bound to use is clearly in the direction as intrepreting the statute as allowing unlocked carry in an automobile without a permit.
Especially since the legislature unambiguously rejected McAuliffe’s proposed amendment (VA govs can propose amendments) that would have specified the gun must be locked up. So, the legislature had the opportunity to specify “locked”, and they said, “Nope, ‘secured’ is what we mean, not ‘locked’ – when we mean ‘locked’, we’ll say so.”
Add to that an official AG opinion (official VA AG opinions regarding statutory interpretation are treated with great deference by VA state courts) that says that a closed (but unlocked) glove box is OK.
Legislative intent is clear and apparant, AG interpretation is unambiguously in favor of unlocked unlicensed carry, so McAuliffe merely outed himself as a virulent antigunner right off teh bat.
Of course, since he isn’t actually a Virginian nor has any experience in Virginia state politics or our legal system, this sort of mistake is to be expected.
The only caveat here is that the new AG is (AFAIK) just as virulently anti-gun as the governor. I wouldn’t put it past him to issue an opinion reversing the one you mentioned here, just to muddy the waters.
But, yeah, the intent of the law as it stands now was to NOT require the gun to be locked up. This bill was intended to merely clear up the ambiguous wording.