Gov. Terry McAuliffe has reversed course on gun control and is taking the incremental approach. A one-time ally is calling foul.
Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group backed by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, criticized McAuliffe’s bipartisan gun deal in full-page newspaper ads this week.
The ad claims statements from the Democrat supporting the deal passed by the Virginia General Assembly last week – expanding Virginia’s recognition of out-of-state concealed carry permits, adding voluntary background checks at gun shows and requiring domestic abusers to give up their guns – are all false.
McAuliffe, in his own defense, has conceded that the legislation doesn’t close the gun show loophole, a chief critique of gun control advocates.
The Everytown ad scores another point in raising issue with a possible new loophole being created with out-of-state concealed carry recognition: not preventing people who wouldn’t qualify for a permit in Virginia to go venue shopping for a state with a lower permitting threshold.
The ad also correctly points out that the legislation doesn’t create a mechanism for domestic abusers to relinquish their weapons to local law enforcement, or for law enforcement to confirm the relinquishment.
But, hey, McAuliffe can now claim for political purposes that he can actually work with Republicans, after the Virginia GOP spent the first two years of his term rag-dolling him around Richmond on Medicaid reform and practically everything else of consequence.
And McAuliffe, his eyes on higher office after his term-limited time in the Governor’s Mansion is up, can position himself as a “moderate” on gun control.
Having Everytown and Bloomberg pick a fight with him over this only helps him toward those goals.
You can almost bet that McAuliffe is hoping for more of these full-page ads. Maybe even some TV. Definitely TV.
– Column by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
