Action | Promulgation of new regulation banning concealed firearms in executive branch agency offices |
Stage | Proposed |
Comment Period | Ended on 10/21/2016 |
The proposed gun ban in Virginia's state agency offices is strictly prohibited by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution which provides: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Legal scholar, Nelson Lund (the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law) has explained that the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in the case of United States v. Emerson (2001) ruled "the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to privately keep and bear their own firearms that are suitable as individual personal weapons . . . regardless of whether the particular individual is then actually a member of a militia. " Therefore, the Virginia Governor not only lacks the authority to ban guns as is proposed, but doing so would infringe upon and deprive citizens of the Commonwealth, duly authorized for concealed carry of a handgun, the right and ability to prevent death and injuries to innocent people in conformity with the rational basis intended by the Second Amendment.