Virginia gun-rights group urges Fairfax County to embrace BB guns as supervisors ease rules on pneumatic guns

By Fredrick Kunkle

The Virginia Citizen Defense League, whose members are well-known for their aggressive lobbying on behalf of the right to carry firearms almost anywhere in the Commonwealth, showed up Tuesday at the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors meeting to make their case for the right to keep and bear BB guns.
With their round, fluorescent orange “Guns Save Lives stickers a-blazin’, VCDL president Philip Van Cleave and about a dozen other members spoke in favor of a new state law that bars local jurisdictions, such as Fairfax, from prohibiting people from shooting pneumatic guns on private property as long as the shooting is done safely. The new law becomes effective July 1.
(They were also on alert for crybabies, at least according to the summons issued by Van Cleave in advance of the meeting:
“We need to be at this hearing in numbers to express our SUPPORT for the new law, so Fairfax can’t go crying to the General Assembly about how most people they heard from hated this new law,” Van Cleave said in an alert to VCDL members Monday.)
Until now, the county restricted BB guns to more open areas of the county and required their owners to register them with police. But the new state law, sponsored by Sen. Roscoe Reynolds (R-Martinsville), trumps local ordinances.
So after lengthy debate, the board, as expected, voted to align its county code with the state law, although its members did not seem happy about it. At the urging of Supervisor Jeffrey C. McKay (D-Lee), the board did retain a provision in the local code that would allow the county to forbid people from bringing BB guns or pellet guns to schools.
“We believe this is an excellent law for a lot of good reasons, and should be embraced,” Van Cleave told the board. “It’s got a good balance of freedom versus responsibility.”
Thomas Pike, of Centreville, who represented the NOVA Sharpshooters’ junior rifle club, listed several young people whose prowess with air rifles won them college scholarships. (He also mentioned that athletic directors love rifle team kids because they also tend to be good students who raise the overall GPA average of student athletes.)
In his testimony, Van Cleave also allowed a peek at his childhood, saying he grew up toting a BB gun in Chicago.
“It’s a very American way of doing things, and it’s a lot of fun,” Van Cleave said.
Supervisor Gerald W. Hyland (D-Mount Vernon) expressed amazement that Van Cleave fired BB guns in Chicago. He expressed more amazement that Van Cleave fired BB’s in his house.
“You fired BB guns inside the home?” Hyland asked.
“You bet,” Van Cleave replied.

Morrogh finds cop he doesn’t love. In other news, hell freezes.

Probe of fatal police shooting goes to federal authorities

By Justin Jouvenal/Post

The Fairfax County prosecutor has turned over the investigation of a fatal police shooting of an unarmed Springfield man to federal authorities, citing complications with the five-month-old case.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Morrogh said the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia has agreed to continue the probe into the death of 46-year-old John Geer, who was shot during a standoff with Fairfax County police in August. No one has been charged in the incident.

“There is a conflict of interest that has arisen in the case,” Morrogh said Thursday. “And there is a second potential conflict of interest that has arisen out of my office. . . . This is the prudent thing to do.”

Morrogh declined to describe the nature of the conflicts because the investigation is ongoing. The U.S. attorney’s office said Thursday that it could not confirm or deny any investigation or comment on pending investigations.

Police went to Geer’s Pebble Brook Court home on Aug. 29 because of a report of a domestic disturbance. Geer’s father, Don Geer, said his son was upset because his girlfriend, the mother of his two children, had decided to leave him.

John Geer had thrown his girlfriend’s belongings in the front yard. She called police and told them that Geer had a firearm. Police said they tried for about 50 minutes to persuade Geer to leave the home, but he refused.

Don Geer said he watched the climax of the encounter. He said that he could not hear what officers were saying to his son but that he saw him standing with empty hands resting on top of a screen door at the home’s entrance.

At some point, John Geer began to slowly lower his hands and an officer opened fire, hitting Geer in the chest, his father said. Geer retreated inside and closed the door. A SWAT team eventually entered the home and found Geer dead.

Don Geer said detectives later told him that his son did not have a gun on him at the time of the shooting but that there was a holstered handgun a couple of steps from the front door.

Don Geer said it appeared to him that the shooting was unjustified, but he was unsure what to make of the probe being turned over to federal authorities.

“I don’t know whether that’s good or bad — if I had a better idea of why they are doing it, I could form an opinion,” he said.

Geer and friends of his son have been critical of how long the investigation has taken, but Morrogh said police and prosecutors were working to explore all the evidence. He did not think federal prosecutors would have to start from scratch.

“No one wants these things to linger on,” Morrogh said.

Our ink will outlast his career

Under the reign of former Chief of Police Rhorer the Fairfax County Police arrested a man for not wearing clothes in his house while he made coffee, set up an eye doctor on a gambling charge and then used the SWAT team to kill him. An investigation into the charge that the Doctor’s primary clients were cops has never been investigated. The police gunned down an emotionally unstable man because cop who shot him wrongly assumed the man was trying to escape. He wasn’t. The cops also shot dead four other citizens under highly questionable circumstances. The department under Rhorer was sued multiple times by citizens. So did they fire Rhorer? Naw they promoted him. According to news reports Rhorer draws a salary of $191,168 per year as Deputy Fairfax County Executive as well as a concurrent pension from the Fairfax County police of $173000 per year.

Occupation by force

According to the most recent U.S. Census figures, nearly one in five Fairfax residents (17.5 percent) is of Asian descent while Hispanics make up nearly 16 percent of Fairfax’s overall population. Those numbers drop considerably when applied to the Fairfax County Police Department, where only 4.3 percent of officers are Asian and 4.1 percent Hispanic. White officers make up 84 percent of Fairfax County’s 1,360-member police department, significantly higher than the county’s general population (54 percent white). Almost 90% of the force lives outside the county.