One year after Bridgewater College shooting; where does gun legislation stand?

HARRISONBURG, Va. (WHSV) - Wednesday marks one year since the Bridgewater College shooting that killed campus safety officer J.J. Jefferson and campus police officer John Painter.

“They were friends, they had been in each other’s weddings, I mean it was a really tragic situation where two people who were providing great service to the college and the community were killed in a real senseless act of gun violence,” Senator Tim Kaine, Virginia (D) said.

Since then, legislators at the state and national levels have been working to implement stricter gun laws.

“Since the shooting at Bridgewater, Congress has done the first gun safety bill that we’ve done probably since ... well since the assault weapons ban in the 1990′s,” Kaine said.

Kaine said a bipartisan gun safety bill, modeled after Virginia laws, was passed at the national level.

“We were trying to take something that had passed in Virginia, extreme risk protection orders, improvements to the background check system and we put those into federal law,” Kaine said.

Virginia’s General Assembly has new gun bills in front of them in its current session.

The Senate passed a bill to make the sale, transfer or purchase of so-called “ghost guns” illegal.

A second bill making the carry of assault firearms in public areas illegal was also passed by the senate in its current session.

These bills will now make their way through the House of Delegates.

However, Kaine and Virginia Senator Creigh Deeds said this isn’t enough.

A second college shooting happened on the campus of the University of Virginia late last year.

After a shooting killing three UVA football players and injuring two additional students took place on the campus

Deeds is pushing to prohibit carrying and possession of firearms’ on public universities.

“This is prospective, you know, we can’t undo what’s been done. We just have to live with it and try to make things better, and hopefully, this legislation, if it passes, will help prevent future tragedies,” Deeds said.

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