We’re just a week away from statewide elections in Virginia, and every day brings a new story about gun control being a central component in campaigns around the state. Today the Virginian Pilot highlights a Virginia Beach-area race where the Democrat seeking to oust the incumbent Republican is hoping the gun issue propels her to victory.
The site of the Virginia Beach mass shooting lies in the 8th Senate District, where the two candidates — Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal and Republican Sen. Bill DeSteph — fighting over the airwaves on what to do about gun violence.
Cotter Smasal, 41, called DeSteph an “extremist” on the issue of guns in a new ad. DeSteph, 55, accused her of exploiting the May 31 mass shooting for political gain.
The battle over gun policy has taken center stage in an election year where the GOP is at risk of losing its majority in the General Assembly. Republicans have a 20-19 margin in the Senate and a 51-48 margin in the House, with one vacancy in each chamber. And a court-ordered new map made a number of House districts more Democratic-leaning.
The paper notes that Everytown for Gun Safety has given Smasal more than $160,000 in her race, which is just a small portion of the millions of dollars in spending on behalf of anti-gun groups in the state.
Jim Geraghty from National Review joins me on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co. to talk about what’s at stake in this year’s elections, and one troubling sign from Republicans: the large number of seats currently held by Democrats that aren’t even being contested by the GOP. You can’t win if you’re not even competing, and before a vote is even cast Democrats and gun control advocates are already halfway to their goal of 51 seats in the House of Delegates. As Geraghty notes, if gun control groups are successful at flipping Virginia’s legislature, you can be certain they’ll take their game plan to dozens of other states in the 2020 election cycle.
Also on today’s show we have the story of a 50-time felon in Washington State, an armed citizen in Oxnard, California, and a police recruit who saved the life of a woman trapped in a submerged vehicle.
You can find the show at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Townhall.com’s podcast page, as well as clicking the video link above. Thanks for watching, listening, and spreading the word!
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