A solemn ceremony scheduled for Tuesday will mark the 17th anniversary of the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech that claimed the lives of 32 students and faculty. As time passes and memories fade, it is important to remember the lives of men and women, young and old, who were brutally stolen from the Commonwealth by troubled youth who had access to firearms and the determination to use them.
Gun violence remains a crisis in Virginia and across the nation, requiring all available tools and the courage to use them. We must not accept that thousands of gun deaths are necessary each year to protect our freedoms, and we recognize that doing nothing allows the bloodshed to continue.
Before the Blacksburg incident, Americans had experienced mass shootings at the University of Texas in 1966 and Columbine High School in 1999; It did nothing to ease the shock and horror.
After a 23-year-old undergraduate student with a history of mental illness shot and killed two people in his dorm, he went to the post office to mail a package of text and video to NBC News, then went to a university building. A fire broke out in several classrooms set up there. There he killed 25 students and five instructors and injured 17 others before committing suicide.
This was the deadliest mass shooting in America before the 2016 Orlando shooting and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting terrorized these communities. Seven of the 10 worst mass shootings in U.S. history occurred after Virginia Tech.
Like previous and subsequent incidents, the Blacksburg tragedy sparked a national debate about access to firearms and the inadequacy of mental health services for people in crisis. In the aftermath, Virginia officials found an incentive to address the commonwealth's notoriously lax gun laws by bridging the gap between federal and state law regarding the information that should be collected for background checks. .
But as before and after the mass shooting, that sense of urgency was short-lived. The tech gunman circumvented Virginia's one-gun purchase limit per month by waiting 32 days before purchasing two guns. Rather than tighten the rule, the state Legislature repealed it in 2013. And the promise to improve mental health services was never fully realized, a problem that continues to this day.
Over the past 17 years, the General Assembly has imposed stricter rules on firearm purchases, asked more gun owners to store their weapons securely, and challenged what happened in Blacksburg and more commonly There was ample opportunity to prevent violence. Too many lives have been lost and too many communities have been harmed in Virginia.
In some cases, this has happened. Following the May 2019 mass shooting that killed 12 people at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center, lawmakers in 2020 imposed universal background checks on purchases, strengthened reporting requirements for stolen weapons, and Approved a bill to reinstate single-gun ownership. Emergency Serious Risk Orders, also known as 'red flag' laws, are also granted for those deemed to be a threat to themselves or others.
This year, lawmakers advanced several sensible gun control measures that will benefit the commonwealth. These include imposing waiting periods for purchases, stricter gun storage requirements in households with children, and so-called “boyfriend” restrictions that restrict the use of firearms to intimate partners convicted of domestic violence. These include closing the “Loophole'' and banning guns at public universities. Universities including Virginia Tech.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has sided with gun advocates and gun lobbies on behalf of Virginians who want safer housing, safer communities, and safer campuses, including a ban on assault weapons. He vetoed the bill and other bills. The fact that polls show people want stricter gun control laws clearly didn't matter to the governor.
We can only imagine what the talented, promising young people who were killed off by tech companies 17 years ago are doing now, and how they will end up changing the world in many different ways. As we remember them today, we should honor those who acted with courage, not cowardice, to protect future generations from a similar fate.
