RICHMOND, Va. _ The new Democratic majority in the Virginia General Assembly took a first, dramatic step on gun control Friday with a ban on firearms in the state Capitol.
The ban, enacted by the Joint Rules Committee of the House of Delegates and state Senate, covers the legislators themselves, staff and members of the public visiting the building. It also covers the legislative office building next to Capitol Square.
It does not cover Capitol Square itself, where gun rights activists have promised a massive demonstration to protest gun control legislation proposed by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam later this month.
"This is something that should have been done long, long ago," Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, said after the House vote.
"We told the Capitol Police we wanted to ensure there weren't weapons throughout the building and this was what they recommended," she said.
Republican legislators said Democrats lied when they described the ban as a recommendation of the Capitol Police, after chief Steve Pike said General Assembly leadership had asked him to figure out how to keep weapons out of the Capitol.
"They threw the Capitol Police under the bus," House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah. "I think that is disgusting."
Gilbert said he and the other members of the rules committee only had chance to look at the regulation minutes before House Majority Leader Charnielle Herring, D-Alexandria, made the motion calling for a vote.
He said the speed and lack of notice was a bad sign for the way the 2020 session would proceed and described the whole process as "nefarious."
Del. Mike Mullin, D-Newport News, replied that there was plenty of notice that changes in rules for guns were coming after the November election, in which Democrats won majorities in both House and Senate, in large part because of their intensive campaigning for gun control laws.
He said incidents in recent years, including one legislator's accidental discharge of his gun in his office, showed an old rule allowing concealed carry permit holders to bring guns into the Capitol and the legislative office building needed to be tightened up.
The ban passed on party lines.
Del. Margaret Ransone, R-Westmoreland, who has a concealed carry permit, said she was upset by the ban.
"I drive all over a rural district at night. ... I'm a woman in the city, it makes me feel safe," she said.
Democratic legislators said urgent action was needed ahead of the large gun rights protests slated for later this month. They said the concern is not with Virginia-based groups, but with out-of-state lone wolves, some of whom have been posting direct threats on social media.
Lori Haas, senior director of advocacy at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said the ban was long overdue.
"It's a return to normalcy," she said.
Several other states, including neighboring North Carolina and West Virginia, have enacted similar bans, as have other bastions of gun rights activists such as Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana.
