Signs of the Times - No open carry in state offices
November 2015
Terry McAuliffe Administration: No open carry in state offices
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 A year ago Gov. McAuliffe announced a legislative agenda that included renewal of the state's one-a-month limit on handgun purchases, a requirement that buyers at gun shows undergo background checks, a ban on anyone subject to a protection-from-abuse order from having a gun, and the revoking of concealed-handgun permits for parents who are behind on child-support payments.

He could not get any of this through the legislature.

Doing therefore what he can through executive orders, last week he issued a ban on open carry of firearms in most state offices. The ban includes offices of state agencies in Richmond as well as buildings throughout the state such as Department of Motor Vehicles facilities and Virginia Employment Commission centers.

The new restriction doesn't apply to the Capitol building or General Assembly offices, where authority rests with the legislature. Open carry is forbidden in General Assembly buildings, by a rule of the Joint Rules Committee. Guns are not allowed in court buildings.

The order also establishes a task force to direct state resources toward gun prosecutions and orders the Virginia State Police to create a tip line to let people collect rewards for reporting gun violations.

The possibility of local gun regulation

If a locality like Charlottesville wants to restrict in any way the carrying of otherwise lawful firearms, they have to seek permission from the General Assembly. The Dillon rule, named for a 19th century legal scholar and rigidly enforced in Virginia to this day, says that localities may only legislate using:

  1. Those powers that are specifically conferred on them by the Virginia General Assembly.
  2. Those powers that are necessarily or fairly implied from a specific grant of authority.
  3. Those powers that are essential to the purposes of government -- not simply convenient but indispensable.
and if there is any reasonable doubt whether a power has been conferred on a local government, then the power has NOT been conferred.
Rather than trying to get permission to write new laws (not likely), two years ago the City Council requested to be added to a list of localities that have been granted the right to restrict the capacity and type of weapons that may be carried, loaded, in public places. That list includes the Cities of Alexandria, Chesapeake, Fairfax, Falls Church, Newport News, Norfolk, Richmond, and Virginia Beach and the Counties of Arlington, Fairfax, Henrico, Loudoun, and Prince William.

The request has languished.

This website has been concerned with gun regulation for many years, and there's an index to this coverage here.

Dave Sagarin (November 13, 2015)

Comments? Questions? Write me at george@loper.org.