The Virginia Senate passed a bill, SB 447, that will allow gun owners to be charged a $500 civil penalty for leaving a handgun in view in an unattended vehicle that’s parked on public property.
Further, the offense allows the police to deem the vehicle illegally parked, allowing it to be towed when there’s a visible handgun.
“This is a minimalist approach to dealing with a huge problem,” said Senator David Marsden, who represents a portion of Fairfax.
Marsden explains the ‘epidemic’
Guns being stolen from cars is “an epidemic,” Marsden said when presenting the bill in the Courts of Justice committee. “It happening pretty much everywhere,” he said claiming the situation of unattended guns being stolen from cars is “aisle 6 at Walmart.”
“One of the current trends seems to be you take a handgun and you shove it down between your seat and the center console visible for anybody walking down the street, and you go into the 7-Eleven, you come back and your gun’s gone. You leave it in the car, and somebody breaks into it,” Marsden said.