Open carry
HB 102 seems to be just more 'piled higher and deeper'. "Prohibits the possession of weapons in legislative buildings except by any person who lawfully possesses a handgun." Does this mean that a person who illegally possesses a handgun can legally possess weapons anywhere else in Virginia? Give me a break! If a person illegally possesses a handgun in Virginia, then it is by default illegal to possess them in the legislative buildings. Patrick Hope is the consummate idiot legislator, with too much time on his hands.
I don't want Thundar to have a heart attack so don't tell him about this one. The reason we were neutral is that the new wording would have allowed open carry without a CHP in the General Assembly. Hope didn't get that is what his bill was allowing. So he was actually making things better. But we had no problem with the bill getting killed since Hope wasn't a good choice to carry it as it wasn't what he meant to do and if it got corrupted, we couldn't count on him to kill it. Hence our neutrality, as opposed to actually pushing the bill. We certainly didn't want to oppose something that would have removed the permit requirement for entering the GAB.
Again, shhhhh, but we got on bill to help with non-permit holders that clarifies that no need for locked glove box, only closed. It is currently law, but not cleanly. That bill has cleared the House. We also were working on a clarification so that a person OCing could just sit in a car even if his gun was temporarily out of sight due to his seat belt or because he was carrying in the small of his back. That one is tough and we ran out of time this year, so we'll come back next year hopefully.