The 'Common Ground' Con: VA Therapist's Word Games Cost You Rights

"Gun safety." Two words. Zero ambiguity about what they actually mean—if you've been paying attention.

A therapist writing in a Virginia outlet wants you to believe that gun owners and gun-control advocates are just one good conversation away from "common ground." That anyone who pushes back is paranoid, reactionary, or too emotionally activated to reason clearly.

**She's a therapist diagnosing the wrong patient.**

The language itself is the tell. "Gun safety" is the rebranded version of "gun control"—swapped out after focus groups told advocates the old phrase was tanking in polls. Same agenda. Softer packaging. More government permission slips standing between you and a constitutional right.

Virginia isn't a hypothetical. It's Exhibit A.

Under Youngkin's predecessor, Virginia Democrats—bankrolled by Everytown and Moms Demand Action money that flooded state legislative races—rammed through a red flag law, universal background check mandates, and handgun purchase rationing capped at one per month. A full package of restrictions that treats every law-abiding Virginian as a suspect who needs to prove their innocence before exercising a constitutional right.

**The criminals these laws claim to target don't fill out forms. They never did.**

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth's violent crime problem remains concentrated in the same cities with the worst enforcement gaps—the same cities, notably, where the political will to prosecute gun crimes evaporates the moment the cameras show up.

So now a therapist steps into the public square to validate the framework. She argues this is about "common ground." But "common ground," in the context of a movement that has never stopped pushing, is not a destination. It's a negotiating tactic. Gun owners give something up. The other side banks it—and comes back for more next session.

That's not therapy. That's a political operation wearing a lab coat.

No clinical credential overrides the plain text of the Second Amendment. No amount of sanitized euphemism changes what these laws actually do on the ground: longer waits, higher costs, more bureaucratic hoops—all borne by the innocent, none of it touching the guilty.

Virginia gun owners already know this. They lived through the legislative sessions that turned their state into Bloomberg's favorite policy test lab. They watched their majority evaporate. They felt the results.

**When someone tells you they support "gun safety, not gun control," make them define every single law they're backing. The definitions do all the work.**

The 2025 Virginia legislative races are the counterattack. Rolling back these restrictions—every last one—depends entirely on who holds Richmond. This isn't the moment for common ground. It's the moment to hold the line and take ground back.

Watch this space. The next move is already being planned—and it won't be announced in a therapist's op-ed.