In two weeks, Gov. Ralph “Blackface” Northam will bring the Virginia legislature back into session to take up gun control legislation.

Northam is trying to capitalize on the shooting that took place in Virginia Beach last month to distract from his racist record. His calls for gun control came even as blood stains were still fresh on the carpet floors of the municipal building where the horrific tragedy occurred.

But only after the national interest in this tragedy had waned, did another tragic story begin to emerge — one that highlights the horrific consequences of gun control.

On the night prior to the shooting, one of the city workers had actually contemplated bringing her gun to work the next morning.

Kate Nixon told her husband she was concerned about a coworker’s strange and violent behavior. She wanted to bring a gun in her purse for protection.

But she opted not to because she figured that she would lose her job if she were ever discovered.

Sadly, her decision not to bring a firearm would be a fatal one, as she was one of the 12 victims who lost their lives that day at the hands of that very coworker.

When it comes to gun control restrictions, we see this time and again. Gun bans, such as the one which prohibits city workers in Virginia Beach from carrying guns, are not a deterrent to criminals. No, they only deter honest, hard-working employees like Mrs. Nixon who don’t want to lose their jobs or go to jail.

The lesson should be clear: Gun control continually fails to disarm bad guys like the Virginia Beach perpetrator, who, incidentally, passed a government background check when purchasing his handguns.

But Kate Nixon was forced to choose between her job and her life — a decision that no one should have to make.

Some might object that one can’t possibly know if Mrs. Nixon would have used her firearm effectively.

And yet even as this tragedy was unfolding in Virginia Beach, there were multiple examples where women around the country were using their firearms to save lives.

Consider just a few examples from within the past month.

• A California mom, fearing for the safety of herself and her children, shot a hammer-wielding intruder in her home.
• A Florida woman held a home invader at gun-point for 26 minutes while waiting for the police to arrive.
• And an Ohio mom shot a home intruder while her children slept upstairs.

These women were able to protect themselves because they had access to firearms. But Kate Nixon was prevented the chance.

And therein lies the similarity with a mass shooting that grabbed national headlines last June.

It was one year ago this week that a former employee marched into the Capital Gazette and murdered five employees at a Maryland newspaper plant.

But similar to Virginia Beach, we see that gun control did not keep the victims any safer in the Maryland offices:

• The Capital Gazette killer passed a background check.
• He bypassed the state’s “evil assault weapons” ban by using a commonly-owned shotgun.
• And the state’s “red flag” law, imposing gun-confiscation orders, completely failed to disarm this killer, even while all his potential victims were disarmed by law.

That’s because Maryland’s “may issue” concealed carry law makes it extremely difficult for average citizens to become licensed firearms carriers.

If gun control truly disarmed criminals and reduced crime, then we would expect to see Baltimore as a shining example of gun control’s success.

Instead, Baltimore leads all large cities with the highest murder rate per capita.

How many of Baltimore’s murders could be prevented if law-abiding citizens weren’t discouraged from carrying firearms?

The same day that Kate Nixon was murdered, the Milwaukee media was reporting how a Wisconsin woman used her concealed carry firearm to shoot a larger, more powerful male who assaulted her with a club.

Like the other self-defense cases mentioned above, this woman used her own gun to shoot the attacker and end the assault — which is the point that Northam seems to miss.

Guns are saving lives every day. And we know this, thanks to President Obama’s Centers for Disease Control finding that guns are used 16 to 100 times more often to save life than to take life.

Read that sentence again. Guns are saving more lives than they take every day.

Regrettably, what politicians like Northam never ask is: What if the very laws they’re trying to impose are actually making the problem worse?

Erich Pratt is the senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, a gun rights organization representing more than two million gun owners.