Virginia gun owners must now lock away their firearms whenever a child lives in or visits the home, after Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a safe-storage mandate that not one Republican lawmaker backed.
The measure, House Bill 871, makes it a crime to leave a firearm unsecured in any residence where the owner knows that a minor or a legally prohibited person is present. It moved through the Democratic-controlled General Assembly along party lines before Spanberger attached her own amendments and folded it into a sweeping gun-safety package.
