Nineteen years ago Thursday, Garrett McGuire was in his senior year at Virginia Tech when gun shots rang out across campus. Now McGuire is a member of the Virginia General Assembly which passed new gun laws he hopes will ensure such shootings never happen again.
“The goal is to get guns out of the hands of individuals who should not have them,” said the Fairfax-area Democratic Thursday morning, speaking to the gun bills he brought to Richmond this past session that are soon-to-be signed by Governor Abigail Spanberger.
His interest in stopping gun violence today stems from his own experience 19 years ago when he was a student at Virginia Tech and 32 people were murdered.
“Horror was the first thing… I was across the street from the first one, and then, huddling with friends, trying to track each other down," McGuire told Radio IQ during the legislative session. "Making sure we weren’t in that building or classroom was a very painful experience and something me and my classmates still carry with us.”
McGuire is part of an ever-growing group- those who have survived mass shootings and now live with the scars.
“I hope generations younger than me will take steps to ensure they won’t have to go through it and the generations behind them don’t have to go through it," McGuire said. "That’s certainly my goal down here”
One of his recently passed bills bans the open carry of assault firearms on public property and the other aims to close a loophole in background checks while also limiting the sale of handguns and assault weapons to those over the age of 21. Both received technical amendments from Spanberger that McGuire plans to accept.
Elliot Harding is the Charlottesville-based attorney who handled the lawsuit that created the loophole McGuire hopes to close.
“What happened at Virginia Tech is a tragedy,” Harding told Radio IQ Thursday morning. “But the legislation McGuire and other Democrats are pushing won't address gun violence and will instead criminalize legal gun ownership"
Harding noted the broader issue is still being litigated and is likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
