Gun Control

Jacob Sullum | 10.9.2025 4:30 PM

If you oppose "common-sense gun safety legislation," politicians and activists who favor new restrictions on firearms often suggest, you have blood on your hands. Both Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate for Virginia attorney general, and Joshua Bregy, the former Clemson University faculty member who was fired for sharing a Facebook post about the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, embraced that argument, which is not just logically fallacious but poisonous to rational debate.

Jones, whose bloodthirsty private remarks about his political opponents recently came to light, has received well-earned criticism for fantasizing about the deaths of people who disagree with him, which he now describes as a "grave mistake." The employment consequences that Bregy faced, by contrast, seem like a clear violation of his First Amendment rights, since he was dismissed by a state university for political speech unrelated to his work responsibilities. But both cases involve a sentiment that is disturbingly common among advocates of gun control.

In August 2022, National Review reported last Friday, Jones sent a series of text messages to Carrie Coyner, a former colleague in Virginia's House of Delegates. Coyner, a Republican, apparently received the initial text by mistake, because at one point Jones said, "Damn that was for [M]ark." Jones nevertheless proceeded with his partisan commentary, condemning Todd Gilbert, then the Republican speaker of the House, as a "POS." Jones added that if he had only "two bullets" and was forced to choose between killing Gilbert, Adolf Hitler, and Pol Pot, Gilbert would get "two bullets in the head." If you "put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know," he emphasized, the Republican legislator "receives both bullets every........

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