Every school board across Virginia would need to proactively warn families about certain dangers associated with guns under legislation that has passed in both the House of Delegates and the state Senate.
According to the bill, school boards would need to develop and implement a policy where they would notify parents, through emails and text messages, “within 30 calendar days succeeding the first day of each school year.”
“Unsecured firearms are a problem that is pervasive in American households,” said Democratic state Sen. Stella Pekarsky, a supporter of the measure. “Research shows that 4.6 million children live with loaded and unlocked firearms in their homes.”
The legislation would require the notifications to tell parents about the “legal responsibility to safely store any firearm present in the household, risks associated with improperly stored firearms, statistics relating to firearm-related accidents, injuries, and deaths among youth and other tips and strategies.”
“Unsecured firearms present a grave threat to both children and those around them,” Pekarsky said. “Seventy-six percent of school shooters acquired their firearm from the home of a parent or close relative.”
Pekarsky argued the legislation “is not meant to restrict or prevent a family’s ability to defend themselves through lawful gun ownership.”
The bill “simply empowers parents with the knowledge they need to safely secure firearms in the home and encourage safety conversations with their children,” Pekarsky said.
There were opponents, however, including the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun-rights advocacy group.
“If it’s just telling parents about the law, we’re OK with that, but this goes beyond that,” said Philip Van Cleave, the group’s president. “It gets into advocacy, and to me, they’re pushing a biased agenda.”
While the bill has been approved by the House and Senate, it is not clear whether Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin will sign or veto the measure.
Youngkin has previously signaled he would be generally unsupportive of bills tightening gun laws, saying that Virginia already has laws that are “among the toughest in the nation.”
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