The Governor’s ban on concealed carried weapons (CCW) is neophyte reaction to an issue that is being addressed in the wrong manner, from the wrong end of the equation.  LAWFUL citizens with a CCW permit must renew their license every five-years.  I doing so, they undergo background checks to safeguard against the issuance of a permit to individuals who have been prohibited by law from receiving a CCW. 

The Governor’s action falsely and naively assumes the omnipresence of law enforcement officials in all State buildings.  It also assumes that those who hold CCW permits are apt to commit a crime with their firearms, when to the contrary they are subjected to a higher level of scrutiny than citizens who lawfully carry open.  Further, based on Heller (District of Columbia v. Heller), although the Court was intentionally silent of the lawfulness of the Government to ban the carrying of the firearms in government facilities, the SCOTUS nonetheless determined that citizens have the unequivocal right to keep and bear arms: the key words for this discussion being to “bear arms”. 

Although a duly elected representative of the people, the Governor is blatantly disregarding the intent of the U.S. Constition,  It was James Madison who wrote in Federalist Paper 46, “The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed these different establishments, not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other. Truth, no less than decency, requires that the event in every case should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their common constituents”. 

Prohibiting law-abiding citizens to “bear arms” whether it is in the backwoods of the State, the State House, or any other property of the People, is not only a boldface violation of a right guaranteed under the Constituion of the Union - a Constitution to which the State of Virginia agreed, but it is also an autocratic and tyrannical act; a violation of the Governor’s sworn duty.  If a ban is to be enacted, it should be through the several duly elected representatives of the people; the Virginia Legislature, and not by Governor McAuliffe's autocratic act.