Opinion: May 31 victims deserve better from Virginia

It’s hard to believe that four years have passed, since the horror that unfolded on May 31, 2019, at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center located in the Princess Anne area of the beach. On Wednesday, citizens, survivors and victims’ families gathered in a vigil to remember those Virginia lost on that terrible day. They also gathered to demand justice and financial reparations for the victims’ families.

Like most Virginians, I remember well the horror of the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, as we had two close family friends with daughters on that campus as students. However, the Virginia Beach victims have been allowed to quietly fade from our memory, as the commission charged to support them, and the public officials sworn to protect them have largely failed them. In short, the difference between this most recent mass shooting in the commonwealth versus what happened at Tech in 2007, is in how the victims’ families and survivors have been treated.

Enter former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, now private civil litigation attorney Fairfax and his team, who represent the interest of eight of the 12 families whose loved ones were murdered. The victims seek a $40 million fund. For context, in 2012, the commonwealth put together a $48.2 million settlement fund for the Virginia Tech victims, which was well received and bipartisan. At the time of the massacre at Tech in 2007, Democrat Tim Kaine was the governor of Virginia. By the time the fund was negotiated, Republican Bob McDonnell was the governor. It was a seamless priority. So far, the Virginia Beach families have only been allotted $1.5 million. This is grossly unacceptable.

Presently, Virginia has a “billions of dollars” surplus. And these victims and survivors deserve bipartisan support. But how do we get there when our current culture around guns in the nation writ large and the commonwealth is so very toxic? The families have laid out a reasonable pathway for how we go forward in a way that honors them and compensates them for their immeasurable loss.

First, the families seek $40 million in the 2023 $80 billion state budget (0.0005% of the budget) for the 12 victims’ families and for the surviving government employees who were affected. Twenty-five million dollars would be divided equally among the 12 families. The other $15 million would support the more than 400 employees.

Secondly, the fund would provide lifetime mental health and medical benefits reimbursements to victims. Thirdly, the current commission charged with investigating what happened would be restructured as it has failed badly, as is evidenced by Attorney General Jason Miyares’ recent letter blasting it. Sadly, the families still don’t have answers to important questions about what really happened that day. Worse, the city of Virginia Beach has already spent more than $26 million to fix the building while doing virtually nothing to fix the families who are also broken.

Here is the bottom line: The lack of action on behalf of these victims in Virginia Beach reeks of the change in our culture when it comes to how we view gun violence and innocence forever lost. And it tells a story, a story of how much Virginia has changed on the issue of gun violence and caring for the victims of such violence in the past 16 years.

Today guns are a hot political issue that divides us against one another, regardless of where we live or work. And we no longer honor the core freedoms we say we value. These families and survivors deserve better.

Virginians like me must contact their state legislators regardless of where we live and demand justice for our fellow Virginians who were murdered, wounded or scarred emotionally that terrible day.

Sophia A. Nelson is an award winning author and national journalist and is a resident of Leesburg.