RICHMOND — Gov. Terry McAuliffe has rankled some Virginia Republicans by repeatedly calling for greater gun control after Wednesday’s deadly shootings in Southwest Virginia.
“Clearly that gentleman should not have owned a gun,” McAuliffe said of Vester L. Flanagan II, who killed a two-person news crew on live television early Wednesday. “That’s plain and simple. That was a tragedy. Now I have no idea if any new gun laws would have changed that, we don’t know, but my job as governor is to do everything I humanly possibly can do to make our communities safe.”
Several Republican legislators took to Twitter to blast McAuliffe for what one called his “shameless politicization of tragedy” — particularly because closing the gun show loophole, a gun control measure McAuliffe mentioned, wouldn’t have kept the gun out of Flanagan’s hands.
“I thought it was extremely unfortunate that while the family is still in shock at this news and while a manhunt is still actively underway, that the governor saw fit to try to advance his legislative agenda,” said Deputy House Majority Leader C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah). “The even more unfortunate thing is that the agenda that the governor cited apparently has nothing to do with the facts of this tragic case. . . . If we’re going to try to fix problems that are the ills of our society, we should focus on things that are actually relevant to these tragedies.”
