On September 30, the Fairfax City Council had a work session on a possible extension of their gun-free zones to include permitted, or should have been permitted, events and adjacent areas; an additional park; and to increase a violation from a Class 4 misdemeanor to a Class 1 misdemeanor. There was also some discussion about CHP holders for purposes of a possible exemption. It turns out there are over 3,000 CHP holders in the City!
The Chief of Police did a presentation on any violations of the current law and provided information on CHP holders.
In the last ten years there have been only three violations dealing with firearms in the areas where the existing ordinance bans guns. Two were before the ordinance existed (in 2018 someone fired a shot into the ceiling of a community center but was never identified; and in 2019 someone reported an attempted robbery in a park the day after it happened and the suspects were never found). The ordinance went into effect in 2021 and only one violation happened (in August of 2025 a CHP holder was reported to have a concealed handgun at an event in a park. He was cooperative, said he was unaware of the prohibition, and turned over his handgun to the police for safekeeping so he could stay at the event. He was cited and the Chief said he doesn’t know if the man has come to the police station to pick up his handgun yet).
The Chief also noted that there have been no firearm related incidents at City permitted events in the last ten years, either. He said that the average response time for a call dealing with a firearm is five minutes. Well, that’s a good response time, but too long if something violent is happening NOW!
One number that jumped out at me was when the Chief claimed that over 7,000 CHPs (out of over 700,000) had been revoked within the last year! That is not even close to being correct! According to the Virginia State Police, there have been 5,043 permits revoked since 2020. I am betting the number the Chief had was over a 10-year period. I don’t believe the Chief meant to mislead City Council, but this information needs to be corrected. I have a call into the Chief.
The Chief gave an advantage of not prohibiting otherwise lawful carry of firearms at permitted events: there can be a faster response time when an armed citizen is closer to an active violence situation than the police.
The Chief had a list of four reasons that prohibiting carry would make things safer:
- A lawfully armed person might respond impulsively to a heated exchange.(This is so very rare with CHP holders as to be negligeable.)
- A lawfully armed person intervening in a situation could do more harm than good.(This, too, is so very rare with CHP holders as to be negligeable.)
- Police could be unable to determine who is the “good guy” from the “bad guy.”(In practice this is easy to do.Good guys will comply with lawful orders from law enforcement, bad guys won’t.I only know of one case where a CHP holder saved lives, only to be killed by a law enforcement officer by mistake.That was in Colorado a few years ago.)
- Reducing fear and anxiety caused in some people by seeing someone else with a firearm.(If CHP holders are exempted and required to carry concealed, this won’t be an issue at all.)
After the discussion, Council voted to have a public hearing in the future on the proposed ordinance as it currently stands. The ordinance could be adopted as is, modified to do something like exempt CHP holders, or rejected entirely. Once I have a date for the hearing, an Action Alert will go out. In the meantime, I have sent an email to all City Council members with my comments on their work session.
