I’d say the chances are pretty good. As we reported yesterday, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger has declared that “universal” background checks are once again the law of the Commonwealth, even though a Lynchburg judge’s injunction on the practice is still in effect. Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones filed a motion with the judge in early May asking for the injunction to be lifted, arguing that recently passed legislation resolves the underlying issue that led to the judge halting background checks on private sales, but the judge has yet to act on that request.
On Thursday, attorneys for Gun Owners of America and Virginia Citizens Defense League asked the judge to hold the Virginia State Police in contempt for renewing the background check requirements on private transfers while the injunction is still in place. Jones also filed a new motion in the Lynchburg court, repeating his claims that the injunction is essentially moot because of the new law.
In a motion filed today on behalf of Virginia State Police Superintendent Jeff Katz, he says that the injunction against background checks was on an old law, and that the new law passed and signed this year supersedes that. https://t.co/KvbhRjh7Lu pic.twitter.com/HfpF3BTZJa
— Brandon Jarvis (@Jaaavis) May 28, 2026
Unfortunately for Jones, the plaintiffs in the case were able to anticipate his argument, since he’s essentially just regurgitating what he said in the motion filed several weeks ago.
The plaintiffs filed a motion today seeking to hold VSP in contempt of court. They claim the state can’t resume the checks without a court order. They also argue that the emergency clause is ineffective because it lacked a four-fifths majority. https://t.co/7FnWtvlUq6
— Joe Dodson (@joedodson16) May 28, 2026
That last line in Dodson’s post is pretty important. Spanberger and Jones argue that the background checks can resume immediately because the legislation that raises the age to purchase a handgun in Virginia from 18 to 21 passed with an emergency clause that makes it effective once the governor signed the bill, but Virginia statute requires emergency clauses to be approved by 80% of the House and Senate in order for it to be valid. Without the emergency clause, the effective date of the legislation is July 1… still more than a month away.
That’s one problem with Jones’s argument. Here’s another.
Somebody definitely needs to read up on the collateral bar rule.
Enforcing the law before the injunction is dissolved is contempt. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. https://t.co/68buAYIeKD
— Garren Shipley (@GarrenShipley) May 29, 2026
It’s quite possible that Judge F. Patrick Yeatts will conclude that the new law cures the defects that led him to place a permanent injunction on Virginia’s universal background check law, but by rushing to renew the checks before the judge dissolved the injunction I think Jones stepped in some legal doo-doo.
It’s also worth noting that in his opinion granting the injunction, Yeatts wrote that “if the legislature wishes to rewrite the law to create a system that does not impose disparate treatment based on age, it may do so. At that time, a court might rightly address the question of whether it is constitutional to require a background check to obtain a handgun through a private sale. Now is not that time.”
The plaintiffs in this case had argued that the universal background check scheme itself was constitutionally flawed, but Yeatts decided he didn’t need to get to that argument because the law was deficient on other grounds. Even if the newly-approved law addresses the judge’s concerns about equal treatment, the question about whether “universal” background checks comport with the Virginia constitution remains in place, and now would be the time to address it.
The sponsor of the bill in question, meanwhile, is making some outrageous claims about the effectiveness of “universal” background checks.
The 2026 law’s patron in the House of Delegates is Democrat Garrett McGuire, a classmate of Seung-Hui Cho, whose killing of 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007 remains the country’s deadliest school shooting. McGuire said the background checks are a commonsense measure.
“This is a commonsense law that passed because Virginians in every corner of the commonwealth understand a simple truth that background checks save lives and keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” McGuire said in a statement. “When the courts struck down that requirement, they opened a dangerous gap, and Virginians paid the price for it. A convicted criminal was able to get his hands on a gun and take an innocent life at Old Dominion University. That is the cost of leaving this law unenforced. I carried HB 1525 to close that gap, and I am glad the commonwealth will finally do what this law requires. We owe it to every Virginia family to make sure these checks happen consistently and without exception.”
Garrett McGuire should be ashamed of himself for making such an idiotic argument. It’s true that the individual who attacked an ROTC class at Old Dominion was prohibited from possessing a firearm, but there is no way that the guy who allegedly sold him the gun used in the attack would have gone to an FFL to run a background check before completing the private sale.
Why? Because he stole the gun that he sold to the attacker, and had already been subject to an ATF investigation several years earlier for several straw purchases of other guns (which led to nothing more than a slap on the wrist and a warning letter from the ATF under the Biden administration). If McGuire honestly believes that this guy was gonna go to a gun shop and have a background check run on the transfer of a stolen firearm then the delegate is too intellectually challenged to be serving in the legislature.
In both the courtroom and the court of public opinion, Democrats are making some awfully stupid arguments in defense of the “universal” background check bill passed by the legislature and signed by Spanberger this session. Judge Yeatts might very well decide to lift the injunction, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to also see him hold state officials in contempt for ignoring the fact that it remains in place as of today.
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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