Dem Del. @GMcGuireVA: “We know that it’s not always true that you need a gun to fight back someone with a gun. Because those hero cadets didn’t. Leivu Labrescu, …didn’t have a gun when he selflessly gave up his body to prevent the Virginia Tech shooter from entering his class.” pic.twitter.com/k9G34CcCtS
— Virginia House GOP (@vahousegop) March 14, 2026
“We know that it’s not always true that you need a gun to fight back someone with a gun,” Del. Garrett McGuire told the Virginia House of Delegates in a speech promoting HB 1525, a bill to change the age of gun ownership and deny it to legal adult citizens aged 18 to 21. “Because those hero cadets didn’t. Leivu Labrescu, …didn’t have a gun when he selflessly gave up his body to prevent the Virginia Tech shooter from entering his class.”
A video of the claim was posted on X by the Virginia House GOP on Saturday. The bill itself is included among a swarm of citizen disarmament bills passed on to new Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s desk and awaiting her signature, including edicts that will ban many semiautomatic firearms and their magazines (sponsored by Bangladeshi immigrant Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim), outlaw carrying/transporting on public property, add restrictions on guns in vehicles, ban making/possessing unserialized firearms, threaten concealed carry reciprocity agreements with other states, require the firearms industry to establish controls under risk of civil actions, limit carry at public higher learning facilities, prohibit firearms at mental health/developmental services hospitals, and add requirements for concealed carry permit classes.
For her part, Spanberger’s office put out some weasel words to cover her pending violation of her oath of office:
“As the mother of three daughters in Virginia public schools and a former federal law enforcement officer who carried a gun every day, Governor Spanberger knows how important it is to make sure kids and families are safe.”
In disparaging the use of firearms for repelling and surviving attacks, McGuire, of course, made no reference to Defensive Gun Uses(DGU) statistics that show, no matter whose surveys are used, self-defense cases far outnumber criminal homicides.
His reference to the cadets ignored that the ones who overpowered their attacker in a gun-free zone were fighting for their lives and had no other choice. How many potential victims are young, strong, military-minded men inclined and trained to prevail over armed threats? It could have ended in a massacre.
McGuire also said nothing about the immigrant jihadist attacker who, per Fox News, was a “ naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone, [who] was previously sentenced in 2017 for attempting to provide material support to ISIS, but appears to have been released by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in late 2024 during the Biden administration.” And he’s not the only Virginia Democrat exploiting the crime to advance citizen disarmament. George Soros-backed Norfolk Commonwealth Attorney Ramen Fatihi, the son of an immigrant Iranian neurosurgeon, went full meltdown and blamed the shooting on pro-gun lawmakers, telling them to “F— right off.” (Not that every gun influencer agrees that imported foreign attitudes are an issue worth factoring in with Second Amendment concerns.)
As for McGuire’s reference to Labrescu and the Virginia Tech shootings, Jews Can Shoot summarizes relevantly:
He was a 76 year old Holocaust survivor who physically held a classroom door shut with his body while a mass murderer tried to break in. He was shot through the door and killed… Calling that tragedy proof that guns are unnecessary is a grotesque inversion of reality. It turns a preventable death into political theater. Librescu did not “show we don’t need guns.” He showed the terrible price paid when good people are denied them.
Another point about the Virginia Tech shootings that Democrats always ignore. From my initial entry in a New York Times panel that pitted me against half-a-dozen antis (see “Next Post” link on linked page to view responses):
“I am licensed to carry a concealed handgun in the commonwealth of Virginia,” Wiles wrote. “However, because I am a Virginia Tech student, I am prohibited from carrying at school because of Virginia Tech’s student policy…”
The published response from University Vice President Larry Hincker was one of ridicule.
“[I]t is absolutely mind-boggling to see the opinions of Bradford Wiles,” he wrote, using terms like “out of touch … inane [and] absurd” to underscore his points.
“Guns don’t belong in classrooms,” he concluded. “They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same.”
We saw how sound that was.
McGuire’s absurdly offensive contention disparaging armed defense while justifying disarming his constituents evokes nothing so much as the scene from the movie Independence Day when the president asks the alien, “What is it you want us to do?”
But wait, as the infomercials say, there’s more, and the hypocritical arrogance is so thick it requires no further comment:
HB110 (conference report passed 3/14/26) adds a civil penalty for leaving a visible handgun in an unattended motor vehicle. The bill text includes this exemption: “The provisions of this section shall not apply to any member of the General Assembly who leaves a handgun in an unattended motor vehicle pursuant to § 18.2-308.7:1 when such vehicle is parked in any parking structure reserved for members of the General Assembly under § 2.2-1172.”
This is, predictably, what happens when Democrats have the votes to get away with whatever they want. Still to be determined: If what happened in Virginia will repeat itself in the midterms.
Armed Virginia Gun Owners Rally at Capitol as Magpul Distributes PMAGs
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
