I mean, you've been in the Virginia legislature for two years.

Is that right?

Yes.

Yeah, just finished my second session.

Chris Hurst represents Virginia's 12th District.

Gun control has been one of his signature issues.

How many gun control bills have you seen in that time?

I have not been able to vote on any that I would say are meant to actually tangibly save

lives and reduce gun violence.

Hurst says it's not like no one's writing these bills.

It's just that in Virginia, this kind of legislation gets stuck.

We send all of our gun legislation primarily to the militia police and public safety committee

that deal with matters of law enforcement but also with firearm regulation.

They all then get reassigned to this special subcommittee, subcommittee number two.

A lot of subcommittees have names after them to describe the kinds of bills that would

go to that subcommittee.

So the public can see there's some order to the process but we don't do that in Virginia.

The majority of the party likes to make them numerical.

One, two or three.

So as to further cloud exactly which bills go where and why.

And they've sent all of the really difficult gun violence prevention bills to this subcommittee

number two where either late at night or early in the morning by four to two votes for

...