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Gun laws are a hot-button topic that is not going away any time soon. With the prevalence of mass shootings and armed, pro-gun rallies, the debate over gun ownership is only heating up. However, there is reason to believe a solution that pleases both sides of the debate is reachable.

While gun ownership is in the constitution, governments have a duty to keep their residents safe. The consequences of gun ownership are often overlooked by proponents and not stressed enough in the eyes of gun ownership opponents.

Virginia has now taken its place as the 17th state in the United States to legalize possession and home growth of marijuana.

Effective July 1, 2021, the new legislation will provide Virginians with limited opportunity to possess and grow marijuana. Initially planned for implementation in 2024 along with recreational sales, the Virginia General Assembly finalized the decision to approve these new laws three years earlier than anticipated.

On February 27, 2021, the General Assembly passed a multitude of criminal justice reform measures, including the abolition of capital punishment, legalization of marijuana by 2024, and several others.

However, not included in the passed reform measures was a bill to scrap mandatory minimum sentences; a measure that Virginia legislators have been weighing for quite some time. This bill was a key goal of reformers, leaving many disappointed with the outcome.

The first National Defense Authorization Act was passed in 1961, beginning a series of federal laws detailing the expenditures of the United States Department of Defense and the annual budget. The purposes of the National Defense Authorization Act include establishing funding levels, determining the agencies responsible for defense, and setting the policies for which money will be allocated and spent.

President Donald Trump signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act into law on December 20, 2019 after the United States Senate passed it by a vote of 86 to 8. One of the many provisions of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act allocates 400 million dollars to the Department of Defense to investigate and pay out military medical malpractice claims. Prior to this Act, service members were barred from holding the government accountable for negligent military medical care by what is known as the Feres Doctrine, named after the 1950’s United States Supreme Court case involving injured service member Feres.

During these unpredictable and unprecedented times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the housing industry is one of the industries that has been hit the hardest with almost 20% of all renters in the United States behind on their rental payments.

In 2020, the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) enacted a nationwide ban regulation to not allow any landlords to evict any of their current tenants. This regulation was enforced as the CDC did not want citizens to leave their homes due to the growing pandemic and many states enforced stay at home orders. This nationwide regulation ban helped to keep people off the streets in efforts to slow down the spread of the virus, and helped tenants who were struggling economically during the pandemic. The CDC’s attempt at helping with this is to have rent payments not be as immediate, in order to lessen the stress of renters during an unpredictable time.