Bonus Interview: Ashley Lanz from Brady PAC on Possible Gun Violence Prevention Legislation in Virginia

Hi, everyone. i’m Sam Shirazi, and this is Federal Fallout, the 2025 Virginia elections. This episode, we will be interviewing Ashley Lanz. She is the Brady Packs Executive Director. So thank you so much for joining me.

Ashley Lantz

Thanks, Sam, for having me.

00:14.90

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, and I appreciate you coming on because I wanted to talk about a little bit more policy issues now that the election in Virginia is over. Obviously, next year, at the beginning of the year, the Democrats will have a trifecta and they will start to be passing bills. And there’s going to be a lot of different policies that they will be considering. And one of them obviously will be gun safety.

00:35.62

Sam Shirazi

So I wanted to kind of ask you some specific questions about that in Virginia and then maybe some general questions about gun safety in the political context. But before I do that, I wanted to just get a sense of you know what your organization does, both on the policy side and on the political side.

01:04.26

Ashley Lantz

We identify, support, and elect bold leaders who will champion gun violence prevention policies in every corner of this nation.

01:14.35

Ashley Lantz

On November 4th, Brady-Pack supported candidates in New Jersey and Virginia. We won 100% of those races and elected a new majority of gun violence prevention champions to those legislatures. Those are among the champions who will now lead a new era of public safety in Richmond.

01:31.09

Ashley Lantz

On our policy side at Brady, we work with Congress and in states to promote common sense gun safety measures. And in Virginia, those are numerous. Virginia has fortunately passed a number of common sense gun safety laws already, including enhanced background checks and extreme risk protection orders. But there’s still work to be done.

01:53.09

Ashley Lantz

in the next session the Legislature will be considering a number of bills, including those to ban ghost guns, a gun industry accountability measure that’s being led by Senator Adam Eben and Delegate Dan Helmer, measures on secure storage, and hopefully law to ban assault weapons as well. So we’re very excited. The sky is the limit going into this next session. And we believe that

02:19.04

Ashley Lantz

these candidates who were just elected on November 4th will meet the mandate that they were given to keep Virginia’s communities safe.

02:26.16

Sam Shirazi

Thanks. So, I mean, that’s a helpful background and and I appreciate all that. so I kind of want to unpack that a little bit, you know, in terms of the election and kind of lessons from the election, i mean, to be perfectly honest, you know gun safety didn’t really come up a whole lot. I don’t know if it was, you know, the main issue on voters’ minds. Obviously, the economy was important. And and so, you know, what do you think, what role do you think gun safety played and, you know, what lessons are there from the election in terms of this specific issue?

03:15.95

Ashley Lantz

We heard from youth across the state through our efforts. We mobilized in the field with young voters. And we heard that they believe that gun violence isn’t inevitable and more must be done, including through stronger gun laws.

03:29.80

Ashley Lantz

Youth are not afraid to turn out the polls, and particularly when they’re frustrated and discontent with how elected officials are handling issues, including gun safety. And we really saw that in this election. We had our youth grassroots on the ground. And we also had paid organizers working across the state focusing on engaging voters around the and issue of gun violence prevention. And that really paid off well.

03:55.72

Ashley Lantz

So we have heard about this in the field. I think you know there were a lot of issues that were going on in this election and being talked about. This was certainly one of them. And we heard a lot of voters talk about this being a repudiation of Glenn Youngkin’s actions, including the deadly vetoes of more than 30 gun violence prevention bills in the last two years alone.

04:16.100

Ashley Lantz

And Abigail Spanberger made gun violence prevention a top issue, a real central issue from the very beginning of her campaign. She wasn’t afraid to talk about it. She met with people about it. And that all had a very powerful result. And I think, you you know, when gun violence prevention is the number one killer of our kids in America, Virginians care quite deeply about this issue.

04:39.26

Ashley Lantz

Public and opinion in Virginia for a long time has shown that gun owners and non-gun owners alike support common sense measures. And I think, you know, there are other takeaways from this election that I would point out as well. One of them being that there’s really immense value in forcing gun extremists to defend themselves in every single race, on every single turf. And for decades, gun extremist candidates who have been bought and paid for by the gun industry have been able to cherry pick their battles and in Virginia and in other states as well. And they’ve been able to dominate the electoral map.

05:15.09

Ashley Lantz

This cycle, Speaker Don Scott and campaign chair Dan Helmer ran a bold and brilliant strategy of putting up candidates in every House district. And now we have this powerful majority of 64 seats, and they are going to work to pass meaning meaningful reforms that save lives.

05:32.30

Ashley Lantz

And this election clearly also showed the dissatisfactions of Virginians with the current direction of our country. It was really a repudiation of the extremist policies that make us all poorer and certainly less safe.

05:44.84

Ashley Lantz

And candidates with pragmatic solutions like Abigail Spanberger won the day.

05:49.74

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, and you know i think it’s a good point, but oftentimes it might not be in the news, but I think for a lot of people, it’s an important issue. And could you talk about your organization or or other grassroots organizations that are focusing on this issue? Because you know you don’t really see it necessarily every day in the news, but I just know personally people who really do care about this issue, and it’s something that might not grab all the headlines, but is something that a lot of voters are thinking about.

06:16.70

Ashley Lantz

Absolutely. Gun violence prevention organizations are certainly active and certainly active in elections. I can talk about what we did in this last election in particular. As I mentioned, we really focused heavily on turning out the youth vote.

06:29.90

Ashley Lantz

We have a program at Brady that we partner with called Team Enough, which are youth leaders. They are led by survivors of the Parkland shooting. And we turned out those youth volunteers to knock doors, hold phone banks, hold text banks, and train individuals who were in the field on talking about gun violence prevention. And we really heard from voters of all backgrounds, all ages about this issue. And it was just phenomenal.

07:00.89

Ashley Lantz

We were certainly engaged in this election and making sure that we could have leaders in Richmond who would take decisive action. Some of that was protecting leaders like Michael Fegans and Nadarius Clark and electing new individuals like a longtime gun violence prevention activist, Lindsay Dougherty and Jessica Anderson.

07:32.04

Sam Shirazi

Yeah. and And so kind of moving on to the General Assembly session in January, where obviously there will be a number of bills introduced. Could you kind of walk through what you think are the most likely bills to pass and you know why they’re important?

07:46.29

Ashley Lantz

Absolutely. Lawmakers must use this mandate to protect safety. That is certainly clear. Every Virginian deserves to feel safe in their community. And that means we also have to keep illegal guns from flooding our streets. We should be doing everything we can to help law enforcement keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals and not pad the gun industry’s profits. So the sky is really the limit, but we think that there will be a number of bills considered, particularly because Glenn Youngkin vetoed every gun violence prevention bill that was put before him. including almost 20 in and the last session. So we are hoping that there will be a secure storage a measure, the measure to ban ghost guns, and one of our top priorities, which is holding the gun industry accountable.

08:47.78

Ashley Lantz

And we also will be working on a permit to purchase bill in addition. So we have a long list of priorities. We think that this assembly is ready to take up all of them and ready to act on this issue.

08:59.94

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, and i wanted to follow up specifically about the assault weapon ban, because I think that one often gets a lot of attention. There’s often rhetoric about, you know you’re going to come and take people’s guns. Do you have a sense of if it’s just going to be a ban of future purchases of these weapons? And do you think a a Governor Spanberger would sign such a legislation if it came to her desk?

09:22.72

Ashley Lantz

Governor-elect Spanberger has been a longtime champion on this issue. she will sign gun violence prevention legislation. i think that, you know, you have to keep in mind that this this assault weapons ban has to be on the table, but so do other priorities. An assault weapons ban is not a standalone solution. There are many solutions that must be addressed, including those that I mentioned, the ghost guns ban, secure firearm storage, gun industry accountability. So it’s one piece of the puzzle.

10:05.02

Ashley Lantz

Addressing the proliferation of these weapons is the most direct way to mitigate the risk of high fatality shootings in public venues and in our schools. And legislators know that. They know that when assault weapons are large capacity magazines, are used in a shooting, there are 155% more victims compared to incidents using other types of firearms. So this this ban must be considered, but also in the context of the many other solutions as part of a comprehensive framework in Virginia.

10:38.51

Sam Shirazi

And what do you say, I’ve already seen, you know, Republican members of the House of Delegates use rhetoric like, well, the Democrats are going to come and take our guns, you know, this is going to be on their agenda, they’re going to come take our guns. And you hear that kind of rhetoric a lot. i mean, how would you respond to that?

10:55.36

Ashley Lantz

No one’s taking guns. We are trying to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a danger to themselves or to others. That is a common sense measure. Common sense measures like secure storage, we’re trying to enact that. That is simply asking people to use a gun lock or a gun safe.

11:13.68

Ashley Lantz

Every responsible gun owner will tell you that they believe in secure storage. So the idea that we can’t have any gun violence prevention reform is simply absurd. And it’s not what the voters want.

11:58.51

Ashley Lantz

It’s just absurd. So these are all common sense policies that voters frankly want. And despite what the gun industry says, we know the truth. And the truth is that they are to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals.

12:14.48

Sam Shirazi

And I also wanted to just push on something that I anticipate Republicans will say in response to some of these measures is, you know, the Democrats got this win because people wanted them to focus on the economy. And now, look, they’re focusing on all this other stuff. And, you know, could you kind of talk about why this is, you know, in some ways something that people care about because of what they’re going through their everyday lives? And it’s not some distraction, like maybe the Republicans would argue.

12:43.91

Ashley Lantz

Absolutely. This is a kitchen table issue. And we can walk and chew gum. In fact, we can address affordability and cost of living. And we can do everything possible to keep our children and our community safe. They’re non-exclusive issues.

12:59.96

Ashley Lantz

And parents will tell you time and time again of the fear that they have in dropping their kids off at school or wondering if their kids will be shot that day. We see that issue with parents. We also know that firearm suicide, particularly among veterans in rural communities, is on the rise.

13:20.89

Ashley Lantz

And the candidates who won on November 4th know that they must address them.

13:26.04

Ashley Lantz

We can do all of these things with the new majority. We don’t have to choose. And we can have leaders who reflect the will of the Virginia people.

13:35.42

Sam Shirazi

And mean I think that’s really helpful in terms of some of the policy and debates going to happen probably in January in the General Assembly.

13:43.72

Ashley Lantz

Mm-hmm.

13:43.71

Sam Shirazi

I wanted to maybe move a little bit more big picture nationally. We’re obviously coming up into the midterms. And I think one thing the Democrats are kind of struggling with is how to win back some Trump voters who they need, particularly in the Senate and some of these more rural and more working class states.

14:02.88

Sam Shirazi

And so often what you hear from you know certain people who are who are thinking like pundits basically saying, yeah, the Democrats need to moderate a little bit on the gun an issue so that they can win you know places like Ohio or Iowa.

14:16.92

Sam Shirazi

what do you What’s your response to that kind of argument?

14:37.76

Ashley Lantz

Rural voters are overwhelmingly supportive, including gun owners and Republicans, of responsible gun I can talk about Virginia, but let’s also take a look at Maine, for example.

15:04.12

Ashley Lantz

Since Trump took office, state candidates have caused significant upsets in heavy Trump-won districts and from 2024. while supporting gun violence prevention. That includes Pennsylvania Senate District 36 with James Malone, Mike Zimmer in Iowa, and Sam Sutton’s victory in New York State.

15:24.18

Ashley Lantz

That was an upset that in an area that Trump carried by 55 points in 2024. So it’s no surprise, Sam, that rural voters don’t want to see children shot shot in school any more than you and I do, And across rural counties in the United States, suicide rates and gun death rates are creeping up higher than in urban counties. The biggest lesson that we can take away is not that Democrats or even Republicans, for that matter, need to move away from gun safety. It’s that they need to stay strong and message clearly on highly popular solutions that ensure the safety of all communities, including rural ones. Safety is a core American value that no political party should ever abandon.

16:04.80

Ashley Lantz

If the takeaway of either party from the 2024 and 2025 elections is that it needs to abandon gun violence prevention and crime prevention, then those candidates should be prepared to lose many, many future elections. But I do hope by now that Democratic candidates realize that they can walk and chew gum, that they can address significant and understandable affordability concerns that we all share,

16:29.92

Ashley Lantz

and also deliver on everyday concerns such as gun violence prevention. The real political liability right now is extremism run amok. It’s really about Republicans who are out of touch with their constituents’ desire for safety and who kowtow to the corrupt interests of a gun industry that’s more interested in their own profits than our lives. And that’s shown in the opposition of extremists to even the most basic of gun safety protections like secure firearm storage. And that’s a real vulnerability that we should all be paying more attention to and talking about.

17:06.50

Sam Shirazi

Yeah, I think that’s a good point, specifically about the Maine election. i think I think it didn’t get enough attention that Maine overwhelmingly passed that measure to increase gun safety. So I wanted to maybe pivot less from on the kind the political side of things to kind of the persuasion side about trying to not just to win elections, you know, convince people, but really kind of a hearts and minds change the direction of this conversation? Because I think often it’d be, you know, it’s often kind of this binary between you’re either pro-gun or you’re on the other side.

17:44.18

Sam Shirazi

Can you kind of explain how, you know, you may try to reach voters who, own a gun or come from a hunting culture in rural areas, but you want them to kind of come over to your side and not necessarily believe all the things that they see about perhaps people taking their guns away and and all that, all that stuff.

18:04.97

Ashley Lantz

Absolutely. Rural voters in particular, they’re not oblivious to the dangers of gun violence. They are especially concerned about preventing domestic violence and firearm suicide among veterans in particular.

18:18.26

Ashley Lantz

We’re leading a first-of-its-kind effort at Brady to both deeply engage and elevate the voices of gun owners, particularly those in rural areas. we’re working with gun owners very closely.

18:29.19

Ashley Lantz

And what we’ve found and what we remind people is that rural gun owners are not a monolith. Most are responsible individuals who in turn support responsible gun ownership and public safety. what we found in this effort of working with gun owners quite quickly is that they not only support common sense measures to protect public safety and promote responsible gun ownership, they also have significant frustration with an extremist run political party that opposes every single gun safety action while our children continue to be gunned down in schools. And that’s really the source of tension on this issue, not opposition from voters, not opposition from gun owners, not opposition from rural voters.

19:12.36

Ashley Lantz

It’s really that our the extremism in this process and the fact that our leaders are doing the bidding of the gun industry. So we’re not really working to convince rural voters or gun owners so much as they’re actually pretty decided on this issue. But we are empowering them to turn out and vote to speak about this issue in public, to hold their elected officials accountable and make sure that gun safety measures that they support pass.

19:45.31

Ashley Lantz

So this is not an issue where we have to convince people. We don’t need to convince rural voters or, gun owners because they actually back these policies in polling.

19:57.30

Ashley Lantz

Often at rates that are very similar to urban and suburban voters and to, to non-gun owners. So there’s years and years of pulling on that around universal background checks and extreme risk protection orders in particular.

20:11.57

Sam Shirazi

Well, you know, speaking about voters, obviously this year they they had their say and it was a good year for Democrats. And we’ll see kind of policies they start to implement because of that. But next year with the midterms, there are a lot more elections, a lot more states.

20:30.15

Ashley Lantz

We are very focused on the midterms already. We’re already endorsing candidates and we’re beginning to you know plan our efforts to get in the field in 2026. At the federal level, we will be focusing on taking back the House of Representatives with a large majority. We believe that there are a number of gun violence prevention champions who are already on the ballot or are about to be on the ballot who will help lead change, much needed change in Congress. We’ll also be working on some Senate races as well.

21:31.94

Ashley Lantz

Another thing that i’ really focused on at Brady Pack is this youth voter piece that I spoke about. We are going to work on building a youth mobilization arm.

21:43.74

Ashley Lantz

I really believe that it’s the youth who have lived through this experience, known as Generation Lockdown, who will bring about the change on this issue.

21:54.35

Ashley Lantz

And that one day they will say enough is enough. And we will have young leaders in Congress who will take on this issue. So we’re going to be doing everything possible to turn out grassroots, to turn out young voters across the country, and really show the political power of youth.

22:13.91

Sam Shirazi

Well, that’s all really interesting. I appreciate you coming on and kind of giving your perspective and your organization, giving more information about your organization. How can people find out more if they’re interested?

22:24.91

Ashley Lantz

You can go to BradyPAC.org to learn more about our organization.

22:30.88

Sam Shirazi

All right. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on. And yeah, we’ll we’ll all keep a close eye as the General Assembly convenes and see what type of actions they take in the new year.

22:41.63

Ashley Lantz

Thanks, Sam.

22:42.60

Sam Shirazi

And this has been Federal Fallout, and I’ll join you next time.