WINCHESTER — A day after a shooter massacred 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, an attorney trying to overturn Winchester’s gun ban suggested on Wednesday that more guns will reduce gun violence.

“There is zero evidence that this [ban] stops criminal activity,” attorney Gilbert J. Ambler told Judge William Warner Eldridge IV during a temporary injunction hearing in Winchester Circuit Court. “A national tragedy occurred yesterday in a gun-free zone. Gun-free zones create danger.”

While Ambler described the school as a gun-free zone, there was an armed presence there. Authorities said a police officer stationed at the school exchanged gunfire with shooter Salvador Ramos before Ramos was eventually killed by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection SWAT team.

Citizens aren’t allowed to carry guns at Winchester Public Schools. The recently enacted city ban applies to public buildings, community and recreational centers, parks and permitted events like the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival. The ban was approved by City Council in February 2021, a month after the General Assembly granted municipalities the right to ban guns at government buildings and government-run public places such as parks. The measures passed on a party-line vote in the then-Democratically-controlled legislature and the Democratically-controlled council.

In April of last year, the plaintiffs — an open-carry advocate, two Winchester business owners, a city gun store and a Winchester resident who likes to carry a gun in city parks for protection — sued over the ban. They are seeking to suspend the ban through the injunction until the case is resolved.

Ambler stressed the plaintiffs don’t object to the ban at government buildings, believing security is adequate there. Their concern is at parks and permitted events.

Because it’s now a Class I misdemeanor to carry guns at city parks, plaintiff Loren Wilkerson wrote in an affidavit that she now leaves her at home when visiting Jim Barnett Park. After a park visit since the ban was enacted, Wilkerson said she was sexually harassed on a city street. “When accosted by a stranger making unwanted sexual advances in public, I desire to have a firearm, in case the behavior of the stranger morphs from advances to an attack,” Wilkerson wrote.

Mark B. Stickley, owner of Runner’s Retreat at 135 N. Loudoun St. on the Loudoun Street Mall, said he no longer carries his gun at work or in his car, fearing he could be arrested if a permitted city event occurs nearby. Besides forbidding carrying ammunition, guns or gun components at permitted events, the ban forbids carrying them “adjacent” to events. Stickley said he won’t be carrying a starter pistol at a race he’s hosting on the mall on Monday due to the ban.

Ambler argued that besides endangering the public, the ban criminalizes behavior protected under Virginia’s constitution, which he said is more expansive than the Second Amendment. He contended the ban at permitted events amounts to a “roving gun-free zone,” and the language about where guns are banned near a permitted event is confusing.

In a written motion filed on April 18, attorney Heather K. Bardot, who represents the city, refuted Ambler’s assertions. She wrote that language in the Virginia Constitution about bearing arms refers to militias, not individuals. She said the legislature gave municipalities the right to enact bans to keep residents and municipal employees safe.

“To enjoin a municipality, such as the city here, from protecting those under its care pursuant to an ordinance which has been enacted in conformance with a law which is on the books and is valid, would be extremely harmful to the city,” Bardot wrote. “The law is not unconstitutional, nor has it been declared so.”

On Wednesday, Bardot said the ban’s language about guns being forbidden near permitted events is clear.

“It’s not a roving gun-free zone. It’s a permitted area,” she told Eldridge “They’re trying to create ambiguity where there is none.”

Eldridge said his ruling is likely to be appealed, so he plans to make it in a written opinion. He said it will probably be issued in about two weeks.