The government has a legitimate role in ensuring that our communities are safe, no rational person would deny that. Public safety is arguably the number one role of the government at the local and state level. However, in the desire to protect Virginia residents, the Governor cannot violate the rights of the people residing here in the Commonwealth, and trample on the Rule of Law.

The right to bear arms is a fundamental right. It encompasses our natural right of self-defense as human beings, and it secured by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, and the Virginia Constitution Article I, Section 13. The right to bear arms contains legal provisions that are binding by both the state and federal constitutions, thus offering some of the greatest protection for our right of self-defense.

Those who choose to exercise this right of self-defense are responsible people, and those who obtain concealed handgun permits issued by the Commonwealth or by another state are the most law-abiding people in the United States. According to research published by Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, carry permit holders are even more law-abiding than police officers, statistically speaking. A police officer is six times more likely to commit a violent crime compared to a carry permit holder, statistically speaking (please do not interpret that as cop bashing, but a mere exposition of how safe carry permit holders are).

The governor issued this order as an "emergency provision," but there is no emergency requiring such an order. This order was placed purely for political reasons, and not for legitimate concerns about public safety. If there was an issue in the Commonwealth of carry permit holders committing armed felonies in state agency buildings, we can be sure that there would have been never-ending coverage.

But, there simply is not one instance of a carry permit holder committing a violent felony in a state building to which the governor or his allies can point. There is no "emergency." It is merely a fabrication that is being used to restrict our civil rights. There is not even a rational basis for this order, and if brought before the Virginia courts it could survive under no level of judicial scrutiny because there is not a rational basis for the order.

Crimes are not being committed by carry permit holders in state buildings, or in nearly any building for that matter. The argument that this will increase public safety is completely unsubstantiated by the numbers.

I issue this challenge to all supporters of this order: find me one case of a carry permit holder committing a violent felony in a state building in the past year, or two years, or even three. I am willing to bet that you'll find nothing.

Finally, this order represents an attack on the Rule of Law itself. In the United States, we operate (at least we are supposed to) as a constitutional republic, where laws are made through the legislative process and not by executive fiat. New laws and regulations must be proposed in the General Assembly here in the Commonwealth or in Congress in the federal government. Executive agencies are not able to create new law by executive orders and have said "laws" be truly laws, or even constitutional laws at that.

If any such ban is to be enacted in state agency buildings, it must be the General Assembly that takes up the issue. In the Assembly, there is ample room and time for debate on important issues, especially issues involving fundamental rights and public safety. If the Assembly were to create a law banning guns on state agency buildings, that would be a different issue because the law would have been made through constitutionally proper means. The Act itself would be up for debate as to the constitutionality, but the process would have been preserved.

In the present case, there is no Rule of Law because the Governor has arbitrarily issued this order at a time when it was politically expedient and not because of an actual or perceived threat against Commonwealth residents. The executive cannot arbitrarily deny citizens their civil rights based simply on location when there is no emergency to justify such an order.

Such arbitrary government represents a danger to our society. The western world operates on the unstated principle known as the Rule of Law; this means that the government acts in certain and predictable ways in a given situation. Citizens need to know how the government will act so that we can run our lives in a way where we do not fear arbitrary government action. Indeed, it is the Rule of Law that separates civilized nations from barbarian nations, as Nobel Prize-winning Economist Friedrich von Hayek noted in the Road to Serfdom.

I cannot support this order because it is a violation of our natural and civil right of self-defense, of the United States and Virginia Constitutions, and of the Rule of Law.

Thank you,

-Seth Connell, Virginia Beach