by shay bell

Plastered on headlines of every local news website, two VCU students killed in a fatal shooting. Victims Adrianna Brooks and Matthew Gibbs lost their lives to gun violence before they reached the legal drinking age. This isn’t even a new story. We’ve heard this story several times over the past year alone, young students lose their life to gun violence, people injured due to in-store shooting, murder investigation involving multiple shootings, it is BEYOND clear we have a gun violence problem in our Commonwealth and yet the only “solution” anyone can think of to combat this threat are ones involving increased police supervision. The SAME police mind you, that are being sued across Virginia for their use of excessive force. The same police that ran over and tased a man in order to issue him court papers. The same people you want to stop gun violence are the same ones issuing the most violence in our community. 

I need y’all to adopt the commonsense that CLEARLY isn’t so common around here. I need Virginia to adopt some common sense gun laws to make sure these shootings are STOPPED. Every month that goes by we are hearing, witnessing, mourning another loss, another preventable loss. We NEED universal background checks so these guns don’t get into the wrong hands. We NEED child access prevention so that responsible gun owners aren’t endangering their little ones trying to protect their home. 

Without stronger gun legislation we could lose our community to gun violence. This will continue to happen until we adopt some commonsense and make it stop.