Delegate Tom Garrett Talks About VA Gun Laws And Weed Laws

All right, thanks for joining us, everybody. It's 833 here on Richmond's Morning News. It's News Radio WRVA. Let's bring in Tom Garrett, member of the House of Delegates, former member of the House of Representatives, as we take an insider's look at what's going on at Capitol Square. You never know what Tom's going to show us. And today I've got a lot of things to talk to him about. Good morning. And let me wish you a happy belated 4th of July. You know how many times I've been lectured this year that I'm not supposed to say Fourth of July because that turns Independence Day into just another day. So having listened to the people who finger-wagged at me, a happy belated Independence Day to you. You know what? It's like Prince. Just one word, we all know what it means. MJ, we know what it means. I agree with you. I agree with you. Yeah, you know what? Let's find things that bring us together. I get that all the time. It's Independence Day. Well, you know what if I say happy Independence Day, how do you know that I'm talking about American Independence Day? Because the British have what are they, like 0.136 on fighting Independence Day. And that's one of the most celebrated national holidays around the world. Well, I guess their contention would be that they had a good run early. Yeah, anyway. Listen, they blew a 13 colony lead here in the States. That's right. All right. Anyway, enough of my nonsense. Let's get to the latest, and we were reporting all morning. Jay Jones loses yet another court case representing the Commonwealth of Virginia this time. A three-judge panel says to Mr. Jay Jones, no, we're not going to consolidate all these together. You have to fight each of these court cases individually, all four of them. We're not going to join them together. In fact, one of the Higgins, as part of the unanimous rulings, said the panel found legal differences among the cases and also rejected, and this is Jay Jones' argument, the state's practical argument that concerning convenient, staffing, scheduling, and the possibility of duplicate rulings. I'm sorry, Attorney General Jay Jones, that it's inconvenient for you to be able to have four court cases when you're talking about the Constitution of the United States of America. Yeah, and the Constitution of Virginia, but it's worse, right? I mean, the three-judge panel was the sort of, I guess, win that he got because they thought that they could, and these... you know, again, I am an attorney, very good one, 804869-444, who practices, so I've got to be careful what I say about the judiciary, but, you know, the Supreme Court of Virginia picks the panel and everything they can do, they still can't overcome the genius of separation of powers, right? Because... These judges have done exactly what they were supposed to do in this instance. So that is applied the facts to the law to make the appropriate legal ruling. And I don't think it's what the politicians thought they would do. I can't believe that we've heard nothing for a while about Democrats in the General Assembly and Dan Hummer specifically naming judges by name who he intended to have removed from the bench in January of 27 because they didn't rule how he wanted them to. He's not an attorney.

And so a ruling comes down. He doesn't like it. And he publicly says, and this is hubris, don't worry, we're going to have these judges removed by name, right? So, but separation of powers worked. Jay Jones wants to dispense with these four cases by amalgamating them into one. Well, I'm a bad news for you, Jay. There's more than four, right? There's more coming. And, and again, you know, I did a video with Delegate Tom Garrett on Facebook not long ago where I said, if they just listen to me every time I said, you can't do that and here's why, we would have saved literally, not hyperbolicly, tens and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in 2026 alone. Wow. In 2026 alone. Because these aren't complex legal arguments based on attenuated legal theories. This is established jurisprudence again and again and again, whether it's the redistricting power grab or whether it's egregious violations of the Second Amendment, but not exclusively the Second Amendment, pursuant to the rulings in Heller and Bruin, right? Like the Supreme Court's weighed in on this. This isn't, there are sort of... gray areas in the law where the law might not have been artfully crafted and we need interpretation. This stuff is settled law and they keep doing it anyway. And it's, I don't know. I mean, but I'll tell you what it isn't. It's not good stewardship and it illustrates the point that I make about government again and again and again. It's really easy to shower largesse on the people and be generous when you're not spending your own money. Right? We do the Milton Friedman's four ways to spend money, which is brilliant, and you should cover it on your show, Rich. Yes. And this is that. I mean, they don't care because it's not their money. They'll just take more. Yeah, it just comes out of thin air, not out of my paycheck. Delegate, Tom Garrett, member of the house, delegates, former of the House of Representatives, joins us on Tuesday as we go inside Capitol Square. By the way, you sound like a lawyer. And a good one at that. 804869-44-4-4-4-4-text if you need help. All right. Marijuana loss. I'm sorry, Rich. I just, you're reaping out all the, all the shameless plugs. Go, yeah, go for it. Marijuana loss. We now have a, I guess, a retail marijuana. No, the answer to your question is no, there are none. What do you mean? No, seriously, what do you mean? No marijuana loss. So they couldn't do the open the floodgates on marijuana that they wanted to do legislatively, and it would have created probably some pushback at the polling place next year when the General Assembly sits for re-election. And so they rolled it into the budget into the form of north of 200 pages of the Virginia budget referencing marijuana. Which I stood up and said, boy, what a bunch of nonsense, because now... I've never seen it before. When this thing blows up... I can't point to this delegate that senator. They get to hide it under the budget. Probably makes perfect sense if you're high. In any event, I believe if I, and I might have, I might be off 5,000, but I believe there's 2,100 and some odd references to marijuana and cannabis in the budget. Not in a bill, right? In the budget. So let me give you some perspective.

A long bill, the reason I like Virginia better than federal politics is in D.C. along bills 5,000 pages, right? And I got to yell that one time because I was on MSNBC and they said, if you read the bill, I said, nobody's read this bill, but my staff's broken it into 10 pieces and read it. And we all sat down and talked about it. And they said, ooh, Garrett hadn't read the bill. I'm like, anybody who told you they read that bill is lying to you. And Virginia, a long bill is 15 or 20 pages. So the budget's north of 600 pages, 200 of which dealt with marijuana, which tells you that this would have been a bad bill if it was a bill. It's even worse when it's rolled into the budget. But the effect of it is that there are no marijuana laws in Virginia Commonwealth attorneys, if you will, if you're not from here, have essentially gotten together. The Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Services Council has put out guidance and we can't prosecute anything that has anything to do with marijuana, which, you know, I don't really care what you do on your sofa on a Friday night. But when you're pushing literally hundreds of pounds of weed into school zones and the case is made and the, you know, let's just take a hypothetical here. Pittsylvania County Sheriff's Office has to call the feds and say, hey, we have these large-scale drug traffickers working out of the Danville area running up and down the East Coast and we can't do anything with them. Do you want them? Which has all happened within the last week. And it's either unintended consequences or Louise Lucas is a better financial planner than we thought. Okay, wait a second. You got to come back to this. You're telling me... that the Commonwealth's attorney group? Who are you pointing out to? I'm attorney services counsel. I can get you a rep to speak with off air, but they have guidance to prosecutors in Virginia saying there's nothing we can prosecute anymore as of July 1st, even the cases that they've been making. And I'm literally cases with hundreds of pounds of weed that we know is being targeted at children. So what? So I think right now you've got a $25 civil penalty if you catch a 14-year-old with 10 pounds of weed. So right now, because of the budget, the Commonwealth's attorney are not able to prosecute any marijuana violations. So we're making this more complicated than we have to because the budget is what? It's law, right? We passed the budget as the law. I didn't. I don't vote for it. But... So because of the law changes, incorporated into the budget, yes, all the, and there are still marijuana laws on the books, but they're all obviated, they're all gutted because they had to establish a retail market. And then so, again. We got members of the General Assembly who were in the weed business who didn't recuse themselves from this. In fact, drew up, wrote the bill, which to me, whatever. But if you make the rules and enforce the rules, there are no rules. So our ethics rules, I mean, heck, I'll digress even further. We used to audit people's campaign finance accounts. They took that out of the law of Virginia in the budget this year, too. Right, right. No, 100%. So now what you're saying is this budget has gutted.

The marijuana laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Commonwealth's attorneys services who give them guidance on what you can and can't do, we're telling them, you know, marijuana laws, we really can't enforce them, don't even bother anymore. Yes. It's the shortest answer I'll give all day. What are you? And it doesn't matter the age, right? I mean, we've legalized it for kindergartners. How is this in the budget? How is this in the bill? How is this not debated? How is this not brought up in the General Assembly in the Senate, in the House of Delegates? How is the governor not addressed this? Well, it was brought up in the form of legislation, which failed, right? That's the thing. So now you have a super legislature in the form of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Appropriations Committee. So 140 members of the General Assembly looked at this and said, nah, bad idea. So then what do you have, 35, I'm guessing, members of Senate Finance and House Appropriations, that's a subset of 140. And it's not only really want it. Well, he's the chair of the Senate Finance Committee. I can roll down the street with a van with 500 pounds of weed in the back. And if I get pulled over by a local cop. They're not going to do anything. $25 civil penalty and send you on your way. There's no criminal prosecution. And by the way, Tom, I drove to D.C. I drove on 95, which is the major corridor north and south, which is one of the biggest drug running corridors in the country. to truck drugs back and forth, human beings back and forth, human traffickers. We don't cooperate in some municipalities with the cameras and we don't cooperate with the feds. So you're telling me, I could drive up and down I-95, and unless I get pulled over by a Fed, I'm going to get a $25 fine for Holland Pot. Yeah. Wait a minute, say that one more time. And you're not getting pulled over by Fed, so you can just do it. Holy. Immoralization that's occurred inside a law enforcement in the prosecutorial community such that the trooper, the guy just out of the training academy who just got his cruiser, the trooper who pulls you over. My look in the backseat, see a bail of weed and think, well, you were going 70 in a 55. Here's your ticket and ignore the weed because the cops and the prosecutors already know there's nothing they can do. All right. We're going to get into this. I'm shocked at this. I'm absolutely I'm absolutely no I'm speechless at this I I haven't seen this report it anywhere. I haven't heard anybody talk about this, but I knew there was all these, all the language in this bill. Let me tell you, let me tell you what they said in an insider's group that I was part of, and I say stuff that gets me in trouble all the time. That's why we have you on the program. They said, well, we can't, we being Republicans, can't shine light on this because some of our members, and I quote, which pisses me off, some of our members had to vote for the budget.

So we're not going to talk about it since some of our members voted for the budget, which this was in, because we have to give cover to the people who gave cover to Abigail Spanberger, Don Scott, and Louise Lucas. And I won't be a part of it, which is, again, how I've gotten in trouble everywhere I've ever been in politics. I'm going to do to the best of my ability, what I said I was going to do to the best of my ability. And if I fail, so be it because I'll know that I did my best. And my creator can be happy with me and I can be happy with me. I'm not running cover for people who lack the courage to stand up and say no, particularly when it relates to guardianship of A, freedom, and B, the hardworking and hard-earned resources of the American and Virginia taxpayer. That's why we have you on the program. That's why we have you as someone who takes us inside Capitol's car. All right, you and I got to talk off there. I got to follow up on this. I'm flabbergasted, quite honestly, in shock. if that's really what's going on in this budget that we've completely gutted as far as marijuana and the rule of law in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And we're going to talk about this. Tom, I've got to run them way over time. I appreciate you shedding light on this. And I'll catch up with you a little bit later this afternoon. Wow. I'll get your reaction to that. And I've got... I've got a message with a lot of the language that he's putting in there, and I'm going to follow up with some of our Commonwealth's attorney. What happens to marijuana laws now in the Commonwealth of Virginia? I'm absolutely in shock, and I think you probably are as well. We'll continue. We'll take your telephone calls. Dave, I'm going to push that back in just a bit. We'll continue. It's News Radio, WRVA.