When it comes to the right to keep and bear arms, West Virginia is by far the best Virginia. While Democrats in Richmond have imposed more than a dozen anti-gun measures on residents this year, the GOP-dominated legislature in Charleston continues to advance Second Amendment rights. As of last Friday, adults under the age of 21 can now lawfully carry without the need for a permit, making West Virginia a true Constitutional Carry state.
House Bill 4106 sailed through the legislature, passing the House on an 85-8 vote and the Senate 31-3. Still, the legislation had some critics during a public hearing earlier this year.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting in March, Dr. Jim McJunkin said firearms are the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States. He said expanding permitless carry to younger adults creates concerns because of impulsive behavior, risk-taking and the potential for substance abuse.
Supporters of the bill argued that it applies to law-abiding adults and could help people protect themselves.
Art Thomm of the West Virginia Citizens Defense League told lawmakers that similar concerns have been raised during previous debates on the issue, but said the legislation applies to adults who follow the law.
McJunkin’s statistic is only accurate if you ignore every death of a child under the age of 1 and expand the definition of adolescent to include adults 18 and 19-years-old. In fact, as the Washington Post(!) reported last year, traffic fatalities are the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 1 and 15, not firearms.
Does that actually bolster McJunkin’s argument that young adults are too impulsive to exercise their Second Amendment rights? I don’t think so. Less than 1% of the population of adults under the age of 21 are going to be the victims or perpetrators of “gun violence,” and to me it makes no sense to strip away the Second Amendment rights of 100% of young adults in an attempt to reduce harm among 1% of them.
Targeted enforcement and educational efforts aimed at those young adults would be a much smarter option, in my opinion. I’d like to see West Virginia sheriffs offer free basic gun safety courses for new gun owners, including adults under 21. West Virginia is also a campus carry state, so offering those courses on the campuses of the state’s colleges and universities would be a good idea as well.
I’m not opposed to firearms training at all, but I don’t think that any right should come with a training mandate. Give these young adults (and other new gun owners) options to get educated and trained on the basics of responsible gun ownership and carrying, and many of them will take advantage of those opportunities. And in West Virginia, a fair number of these young adults have grown up in gun-owning households. They’ve been taught gun safety and responsible gun ownership from an early age, so they’re not just picking up a gun and deciding to carry it while remaining totally ignorant of the basic rules of gun handling.
HB 4106 is a big step forward, and one that’s all the more important given the regression in 2A rights taking place in neighboring Virginia. I applaud the West Virginia legislature and Gov. Patrick Morrisey for strengthening the right to keep and bear arms in the Volunteer State, and I hope that other states will soon follow their example.
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