Virginia Democrats Approve ‘Assault Firearm’ Ban

A bill to ban the sale, manufacture, and transfer of commonly owned semi-automatic firearms and ammunition magazines has cleared its final hurdle in the Virginia legislature and is on the way to Gov. Abigail Spanberger. 

Under the legislation, ammunition magazines with a capacity of more than 15 rounds  as well as semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and pistols with common features like a folding stock or a threaded barrel will no longer be available for sale beginning on July 1, 2026. In a statement after the final passage of the legislation, Spanberger said she was “grateful for the efforts of legislators and advocates to address gun violence in Virginia communities,” and “looks forward to reviewing all legislation that comes to her desk.”

“We are simply saying, if you had it, you can keep it, but going forward, you simply cannot purchase them,” said state Sen. Saddam Salim (D-Fairfax), the bill’s sponsor.

Salim said the bill allows for owners of those transfer the weapons if they no longer want them, such as selling them to a licensed firearms dealer or someone outside of Virginia who is legally allowed to possess one. It will also allow those firearms to be inherited by an immediate family member (which is described in the legislation as “a spouse, children, parents, grandparents, and siblings”).

The bill also exempts certain groups from the restrictions including groups like law enforcement and security at federal facilities.

“The overall goal of this bill is to ensure that we have less weapons of war on the streets,” Salim said. He added that the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech happened when he was in high school and many more have happened since. “Instead of trying to do something, we just continue to say, we’re going to think about you and we’re going to pray for you. So we have not seen a lot of that being done.”

The Virginia Tech shooting was carried out by a twisted individual who used two handguns, not an “assault firearm”. AR-15s and other guns covered by the ban are rarely used in crimes. In fact, there’s no evidence that any of the guns covered by the ban were used in a homicide in the Commonwealth last year. These aren’t “weapons of war.” They’re used for a variety of lawful purposes, including hunting, competition, and yes, self-defense as well. 

“Large capacity” magazines are used more frequently by criminals, but they’re also far more common among lawful gun owners. As the D.C. Court of Appeals noted last week when it struck down the District’s ban on “large capacity” magazines (in D.C’s case, magazines that can hold more than ten rounds):

Heller was not concerned with how often arms were actually fired in self-defense; it asked only whether they were“typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Most firearms held in self-defense will never be fired in self-defense at all—that cannot justify a ban on ammunition simply because it is rare for law-abiding citizens to actually shoot some attacker, or because blanks might suffice to scare most attackers off without live ammunition. Moreover, we have no doubt that law-abiding citizens do regularly fire more than 10 rounds for lawful purposes like target practice and marksmanship, and the Second Amendment’s protections extend to those activities as well. 

Because 11+ magazines are in common and ubiquitous use for lawful purposes, the District’s outright ban on them violates the Second Amendment.

And Virginia’s ban does too, or at least it will when if and when it takes effect. 

Second Amendment groups are already vowing a legal challenge, and I expect we’ll see multiple lawsuits filed in both state and federal court. Unfortunately for Virginia gun owners like myself, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has already upheld Maryland’s “assault weapon” and magazine ban, so a federal challenge faces an uphill climb… at least until the Supreme Court gets off its collective rear end and takes a case dealing with the issue. 

Virginia gun sales have already been surging thanks to the Democrats’ aggressive anti-gun agenda this session, and this will only lead to an even bigger run on affected firearms and magazines, at least in the short term. Salim’s stated intention is to have less of these firearms “on the street,” but he and his anti-gun colleagues in the General Assembly have guaranteed that there will be far more “assault firearms” and “large capacity” magazines in the hands of lawful gun owners by July 1 than we would have seen if his bill had never been introduced to begin with. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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