Glenn Youngkin is the governor-elect of Virginia. This in a state which many on the anti-Second Amendment side figured had turned blue and would remain so for the foreseeable future.

Clearly, that wasn’t the case.

Now that Youngkin is set to officially take office, the NRA is making a request. They want someone removed from a particular state panel, and for a good reason.

With a Republican soon to take over the Executive Mansion, the National Rifle Association is seeking to remove a prominent gun control advocate from the state’s crime board.

NRA officials in Virginia said Thursday that they would ask Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin to remove Lori Haas from the Virginia State Crime Commission, an agency that studies and makes recommendations related to public safety.

Haas, whose daughter was wounded during the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting in which 32 students and professors were slain, is a regular voice in the Virginia legislature in favor of stricter gun control legislation. Haas, who was appointed to the commission by Gov. Ralph Northam, could not immediately be reached for comment.

It’s unclear if Youngkin will heed the NRA’s request. The governor-elect’s relationship with the NRA has been more distant than that of past GOP candidates, and he did not emphasize gun control during his campaign, other than saying generally that he supports the Second Amendment. The Youngkin transition on Thursday declined to comment specifically on the NRA’s request.

As the Virginia director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, Haas was a prominent supporter of the package of gun control bills Northam signed in 2020, including measures to require universal background checks for gun purchases and restore the limit on handgun purchases to one a month.

In other words, Haas is a gun control advocate and we all know what kind of solutions to crime gun control advocates propose. They don’t see any solution that doesn’t involve infringing on the people’s right to keep and bear arms. That alone should be enough reason to remove her from the panel.

Or, at a minimum, place a gun rights advocate on the commission to counter her.

As noted above, though, there’s no way to know if Youngkin will do as the NRA requests or not. It’s possible that he may choose not to for a number of reasons. Youngkin tried to position himself as fairly moderate and as also noted, he didn’t campaign on gun rights. It’s unlikely he’s going to want to make waves on guns right from the get-go.

However, he should consider that someone like Haas isn’t going to be open to any information that runs contrary to her anti-gun bias. She hates guns and has a reason to hate guns and simply isn’t open to any solution that doesn’t involve controlling guns. If the purpose of the commission is to make the best recommendations for addressing crime as possible, it’s unlikely someone like Haas would be open to all the possibilities.

For that reason alone she should be gone, as well as anyone else who shares that degree of bias.

Just don’t be too surprised if Youngkin doesn’t think the same way.