Gun Show
THE FXBG ADVANCE WEDNESDAY 7/22/26 AFTERNOON READ
By Steve Rabson, GUEST COLUMNIST
On December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old man shot and killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The shooter used an M15-E2S semi-automatic assault rifle purchased legally by his mother.
I had recently moved to Fredericksburg from Connecticut’s neighboring state of Rhode Island, and wondered, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook slaughter, how easy it would be to buy such a gun in Virginia, which had considerably looser firearm laws than those Northeast states.
There was a gun show at the Fredericksburg Convention Center later that same month, so I decided to find out. The only weapon I had fired in my life was an M-14 semi-automatic rifle in Army basic training.
After passing through a corridor where I was handed several advertising fliers, I entered a large exhibition hall where local gun dealers stood behind tables displaying their merchandise. I walked up to a table where I saw rifles, and asked if I could purchase an M15-E2S. The dealer looked in a catalogue and said he didn’t have an M15, but could sell me a mostly equivalent AR-15. When I said I was still interested, he asked to see my driver’s license. I explained that I had only recently moved from Rhode Island to Virginia. Looking disappointed, he told me that he couldn’t sell me the gun at his table, but directed me to a car in the parking lot outside where he said his brother-in-law could help me. I went home instead.
Last year, guns killed 1163 people in Virginia, 12.8 per 100,000. That compares with 224 in Connecticut, 6.2 per 100,000. In European countries and Japan gun deaths are in the single digits annually.
This year, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a law prohibiting the sale, purchase, and transfer of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, but lawsuits challenging the law have currently blocked its implementation while sheriffs and prosecutors in some counties—including the Spotsylvania Commonwealth’s Attorney—have declared their refusal to enforce it. This means that more Virginians will die, shot with weapons bought, sold, and carried in the state—some of them from the trunks of cars in parking lots outside gun shows.
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Steve Rabson is a jazz pianist, retired professor from Brown University, and current adjunct Instructor at the University of Mary Washington.
Thanks, Steve.