Like many in this movement, Laura Jane Cohen was first inspired to take action on gun safety in the wake of the tragic mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. She knows that our nation’s weak gun laws put our children at risk, and she’s worked diligently to lobby lawmakers in Richmond and Washington DC to take necessary steps to keep our kids safe from senseless gun violence. In Virginia, these calls for action helped motivate lawmakers to pass numerous improvements to the Commonwealth’s gun laws since 2019, including measures to expand background checks to all gun sales and to create a statewide extreme risk law. However, Cohen didn’t stop there—in 2020, she stepped up to run for the Fairfax County School Board and won—and she’s made the issue of gun safety a top priority ever since. In her current capacity, she has worked to ban guns from all properties owned and leased by Fairfax County Public Schools and to strengthen the gun violence prevention curriculum for students. In Richmond, Laura Jane Cohen hopes to build on this progress at the state level, where she’s committed to strengthening Virginia’s secure storage laws, disarming domestic abusers, and keeping weapons of war off our streets.

We are proud to endorse Laura Jane Cohen for the Virginia House of Delegates.