In fact, some in Virginia are planning gun control bills. Yet gun rights groups urge lawmakers to not be too quick to pass them.

Shortly after the shootings, Democratic lawmakers in Virginia announced a plan to approve stricter gun control measures in the General Assembly in the next legislative session.

House Democrats announced they would introduce bills to restrict high-capacity magazines, ban ghost guns, raise the age to buy certain firearms and hold the gun industry accountable. Senate Democrats released a statement in which the caucus said it was beyond the point of thoughts and prayers and said the state must collectively come together to end gun violence. Senate Democrats did not unveil any policy proposals and did not respond to an inquiry from The Center Square about what specific actions they intend to take.

Some gun groups have cautioned against passing stricter gun control, arguing Democrats already passed a wide range of gun control policies in recent years that have not deterred gun violence.

“Virginia already has many of the same failed, gun control policies that the anti-gun Left is calling for — red flags laws, universal background checks, and more,” Jordan Stein, the southeast region director for Gun Owners of America, told The Center Square. “Further, Walmart’s ‘no carry’ policy for employees made them sitting ducks. More gun control will only enable these killers. We need the freedom to protect ourselves from evil doers!”

Let’s understand that nothing currently in the works in Virginia could have done anything, even theoretically.

For example, restricting higher-capacity magazines sounds like a way to minimize the impact of a shooting, but when everyone around you is unarmed, reloading is trivial. A 10-round magazine is also more than enough to kill the numbers killed in both the UVA shooting and the Chesapeake shooting.

Neither of these incidents involved a so-called ghost gun. Both used traditionally manufactured firearms that would be excluded from any ban on homemade firearms. All such a ban will do is restrict law-abiding citizens from making guns. The bad guys will keep doing it.

Raising the age to buy certain guns won’t do anything, because while the story doesn’t say to what age or what kind of guns, handguns are already restricted to those 21 and above, and the only push to raise age limits are to do so for long guns.

Both of these incidents involved people over the age of 21 and they used a handgun in each incident.

“But if we hold the gun industry accountable…”

For what? What did the gun industry actually do that led to this? You can’t say “they made guns” because that’s not what led to this and you know it. That’s like blaming gun manufacturers for officer-involved shootings.

And don’t blame the marketing, either. Gun control advocates have been doing that lately, but it’s funny how they can never illustrate how a shooter actually came across such marketing. In fact, these laws never even require proof the killer saw an ad.

Which is probably going to get these laws bounced sooner or later.

None of these proposed laws will stop the next mass shooting in Virginia. After all, the red flag laws that we were told would stop them sure as hell didn’t. Neither did any of the other laws on the books in Virginia.

So spare me the nonsense.

The truth is that this isn’t a gun control issue and never has been. We don’t need gun control, we need to look at what leads to these shootings in the first place.