2025 Virginia election presents stark choice on school safety

Former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears — the Democratic and Republican candidates for Virginia governor in 2025 — have sharply contrasting positions on gun safety.

Nearly two decades after the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting, gun violence remains a significant concern in Virginia. According to nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise, the state has had more than 50 mass shootings since 2020, and guns were the leading cause of death for children in 2021.

In 2023, a six-year-old Newport News student shot and injured a teacher after bringing his mother’s handgun to school. In April, a Spotsylvania County third grader brought his parents’ unsecured handgun to school in his backpack and accidentally discharged it in the classroom.

Stronger gun safety laws have been shown to make a clear reduction in the gun deaths in states across the country, per data from Everytown for Gun Safety.

Youngkin’s parade of vetoes 

The Democratic-led Virginia General Assembly passed dozens of gun safety bills in 2024 and 2025, including assault weapons bans, a five-day waiting period for firearm purchases and measures intended to prevent domestic abusers from accessing weapons. Nearly all were vetoed by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. 

Asked for comment for this story, a Youngkin spokesperson referred the Virginia Independent to the governor’s veto statements. 

Several of the bills focused on keeping dangerous weapons away from kids.

Senate Bill 1134, introduced by Democratic Sen. Jennifer Boysko and passed along party lines in the House of Delegates and Senate, would have required that “any person who possesses a firearm in a residence where such person knows that a minor or a person who is prohibited by law from possessing a firearm is present shall store such firearm and the ammunition for such firearm in a locked container, compartment, or cabinet that is inaccessible to such minor or prohibited person.” Current law requires safe storage of firearms in homes with children under age 14.

Youngkin said in his veto message: “I continue to support incentives for safe firearms storage such as the firearms safety device tax credit. However, this particular legislation would limit individuals’ access to firearms in their homes and criminalize responsible law-abiding citizens.” 

“We have seen from around the country, and certainly in Virginia, there are a number of instances where small children have gotten hold of a firearm and ended up either killing themselves or one of their loved ones, accidentally,” Boysko told the Virginia Independent in an interview, noting that most school shooting and teen suicides use weapons from their own home, a neighbor’s home, or a relative’s home. 

“I cannot, for any reason, understand why something that is shown and proven to be a deterrent to children getting hands on a gun would not be passed,” Boysko said. 

Democratic Del. Laura Jane Cohen sponsored House Bill 1678, which would have required school boards to annually remind parents of Virginia’s existing laws requiring safe storage of firearms and prescription drugs. 

The bill passed with all Democrats and a handful of Republicans in support, but after the General Assembly refused Youngkin’s attempt to amend the bill with unrelated anti-LGBTQ provisions, he vetoed it, calling the proposal “unnecessary for responsible parents and ineffective in persuading the irresponsible.” 

Cohen told the Virginia Independent that the veto did not surprise her.

“Disappointing that the governor doesn’t take seriously the safety of kids,” she said.

“About 60,000 kids a year wind up in the emergency room for ingesting medication that’s not properly put away,” Cohen said. “And so we really felt like, oh my gosh, this is such an easy opportunity to just remind parents to store these weapons and store these medications. And just like firearms, one of the leading groups of kids who are accidentally poisoned by medication are preschool-aged kids.”

House Bill 1607, which was proposed by Democratic Del. Dan Helmer, would have banned the sale or transfer of most assault weapons and high-capacity feeding devices in Virginia. It also included provisions prohibiting those under 21 from possessing semi-automatic weapons. 

“The Constitution precludes the Commonwealth from prohibiting a broad category of firearms widely embraced for lawful purposes, such as self-defense,” Youngkin argued in explaining vetoing the bill, though the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected challenges to assault weapons bans around the country.

“My wife works in our public schools,” Helmer told the Virginia Independent. “My kids attend them. I served in Iraq and Afghanistan, weapons similar to those I carried in war zones have no place being turned on our schools, our communities and our streets and the fact that MAGA Republicans are too terrified of Trump and the NRA to stand up and do something about it. Is going to be a critical issue this November.”

Helmer noted that these and other bills to reduce youth gun violence will become law next year, should Democrats win the governor’s election and keep their majority in the House of Delegates.

The next state Senate election is not scheduled until 2027.

Virginians demand action

Cohen recalled her own experience as a second grade teacher, having to answer questions from eight-year-old kids during active shooter lockdown drills. 

“I finally just said to all of my students, sitting in a circle on the floor, ‘Do you believe that I would ever let anybody hurt you?’ And they said, ‘No, Mrs. Cohen.’ And I said, that is my promise to you. And knowing that my own two kids were down the hall with other teachers who were promising the same thing, who I was counting on would do what I would do for other people’s kids and sacrifice my life to try to protect them. It was absolutely a moment that sticks with you, I hope for the rest of my life, as just remembering what the stakes are and what we ask of our teachers every single day.”

More than two-thirds of Virginia voters support gun safety measures like stronger background checks and ghost gun bans, while 55% say it’s more important to protect individuals from gun violence than to protect gun access, according to Everytown.

Shantell Rock, a Prince William County native and a volunteer with pro-gun safety group Moms Demand Action, said that as a foster and adoptive mother to five young boys, gun violence is a big concern to her. That’s both because of shootings that have appeared in the news, and one that took place on her own street a few years ago, she said.

Rock said she has been left disappointed by the current governor’s actions on gun safety legislation.

“I can tell you that I feel very good with the House of Delegates and the senators … who worked very, very hard to get some of this legislation passed.” she said. “And when it gets to the governor’s desk, he vetoes a majority of those bills, a number of which could have prevented some of these incidents we are dealing with right now. The reality is, guns are the number one killer of our children and teens in Virginia, and we need to make sure we have safety measures in place to where our kids are not being killed by unsecured weapons.”

Gun safety has made the 2025 race for governor important to Rock, who said she believes Spanberger understands the importance of passing “common sense laws to keep our kids safe.”

“I like to stress this is not about politics,” she said. “This is about the safety of our kids, our communities, our schools, our churches, our colleges. That’s what this is about throughout the commonwealth.”

Grace Varughese, a senior at Hayfield Secondary School in Fairfax County and a student leader of the Students Demand Action chapter there, said she joined the pro gun safety advocacy group because of all the gun violence she saw in her world as she was beginning high school.

“We saw Uvalde and as an 18 year old — I was born in 2006 — you hear these horrific stories about Sandy Hook and Parkland,” Varughese said. “Uvalde was kind of the first one I saw happening in real time. This is my generation, and guns are the number one killer.”

She noted Virginia’s history of gun violence.

“We’ve had multiple mass shootings, not just at Virginia Tech — UVA,” she said, referring to the 2022 mass shooting at the University of Virginia that killed three and injured two others.

“There’s also been suicide by firearms, also at those schools,” she said. As recently as May 5, a student died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the University of Virginia.

The stakes are high in the upcoming election, Varughese said.

“Earle-Sears is just a rubber stamp for whatever Youngkin says, and Youngkin is a coward when it comes to Trump,” she said. “Abigail Spanberger is going to stand up for Virginia, and as a former Moms Demand Action volunteer herself, she knows how important it is for gun safety measures in school, and as she’s been a U.S. representative, she has supported gun violence prevention measures and we are hoping that she’ll do the same in the governor’s mansion.”

Spanberger has committed to gun safety, announcing her support for stronger policies in April after a shooting left three dead in the congressional district she previously represented.

“I will sign legislation into law to make progress on these issues to keep Virginia families safe,” she said. “I will not veto common-sense proposals like our current governor has done.”

Earle-Sears, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story, has a long history of taking a hard line against gun safety. 

“I will defend our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms,” she wrote on a subsequently-scrubbed issues page on her 2021 campaign website. “We have seen the continued whittling away of this right. I believe the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects individual gun ownership. Gun control laws infringe on the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety. Gun control laws DO NOT deter crime; rather it is gun ownership that deters crime.”