As an estimated 22,000 people flooded the state Capitol grounds and the surrounding streets Monday, issues surrounding gun rights dominated the state legislature’s annual Lobby Day event.
Dozens of gun-rights supporters, many sporting orange “Guns Save Lives” stickers, milled throughout the Pocahontas legislative office building Monday morning to lobby legislators to oppose gun control legislation.
Gov. Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency in advance of the rally that drew some heavily armed gun-rights supporters to the vicinity of Capitol Square and fear of violence kept some opposing groups away from the area. Advocates of gun control laws canceled the annual Martin Luther King Day Vigil and Advocacy Day Against Gun Violence because of what state officials termed credible threats of violence by outside militias.
Still, some gun control advocates found ways to take part on Lobby Day.
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Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, two national gun control advocacy groups, stayed away from the fray, but mobilized 100 volunteers to make at least 2,300 calls to Virginia lawmakers, thanking them for supporting gun control legislation, according to organizers.
“It’s everyone’s right to go to the Capitol and speak to their legislators and share their opinions, but when extremists descend on the Capitol and prevent other people from participating and exercising their right as voters, that’s really discouraging to see,” said Kristin DuMont, community outreach lead for Moms Demand Action Richmond.
DuMont, a former elementary school teacher, became involved in activism after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012 made her wary of the same thing happening at her school.
Lisette Johnson, a Richmond resident and a survivor of domestic gun violence who advocates with Everytown for Gun Safety, said the photos of people gathering at the Capitol with firearms triggered traumatic memories of her own assault, when her husband shot her in front of her children in 2009. (Her husband, Marshall E. Johnson, took his own life that day, police said.)
“The magnitude of today — it did what it was designed to do,” Johnson said. “It was intimidating. It was menacing-feeling.”
But Johnson said the Virginia voters who elected a Democratic majority sent a “loud and clear” message that they want the legislators to pass laws such as universal background checks for gun purchases and “red flag” laws that would allow law enforcement to take firearms away from someone deemed to be a danger to himself or others.
“The individuals who were down here, while they looked like a lot of numbers, in the scheme of all the voters in Virginia, they weren’t,” she said. “They voiced their opinions in the polls, I assume, in November. We voiced ours. Our voice is being carried by the General Assembly this year, and I don’t think that they’re going to be intimidated, just as I’m not going to be intimidated.”
In addition, 13 students with March for Our Lives slept on the floor in two legislators’ offices Sunday night so they could participate in Lobby Day.
“Everybody in this room and everybody who came with us was fully aware of what we were walking into,” said Briana Spainhour, 19, a student at George Washington University and a member of the National March for Our Lives staff who oversees its work in Virginia.
The students were looking for a way to voice their support for gun control measures in the face of fierce opposition, when Dels. Chris Hurst, D-Montgomery, and Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, agreed to let them stay overnight in their offices in the Pocahontas Building.
“I was quite concerned they were going to come one way or another, so we provided them a safe way to do it,” said Helmer, who is serving his first term in the House. “The reality is these college students, and one high school student, represent where the majority of Virginians are.”
Hurst is a former broadcast journalist whose fiancée, fellow reporter Alison Parker, was shot to death in 2015 while doing a live interview.
“These are smart kids who are really passionate about a cause,” he said. “What they were doing was really brave.”
The two delegates slept on the floor in the office of Helmer’s chief of staff, while the students slept in the offices of the legislators and their aides.
“I did not get a good night’s sleep,” Hurst acknowledged.
The March for Our Lives movement grew out of student anger and protests after the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in which a former student fatally shot 17 people and injured 17 others. Now, it encompasses students at all levels across the country who say they won’t tolerate gun violence in their schools and on their streets.
“This is a generational trauma and generational defining issue,” said Spainhour, who hadn’t been born when the annual vigil began.
For gun control advocates, this was supposed to be the year when they could rally in Richmond “from a position of power,” said Michael McCabe, 17, of Fairfax, the organization’s Virginia policy director.
Democrats took control of both chambers of the General Assembly in elections fueled by a mass shooting in Virginia Beach on May 31 and Gov. Ralph Northam’s push for gun control measures that Republicans quickly rejected in a cursory special session on July 9.
“The last election was a mandate on guns,” said Christian Heyne, vice president of policy for Brady, a gun control organization.
Despite the cancellation of the annual vigil and rally, McCabe is optimistic that Virginia is poised to make big changes in its gun laws.
“We’re not here because things aren’t happening,” he said. “We’re here to underscore that they are.”