NRA: Virginia Governor’s Race Should Be Referendum on Second Amendment

The upcoming elections in Virginia have been more than a little wild to watch. Because they’re off-year elections, there’s not a whole lot else going on, so there is always a significant amount of attention on what’s happening in the Old Dominion State. I kind of follow it anyway since I spent most of my Navy career there, and Cam lives there, so you know he’s paying attention, but a lot of others are watching too. That’s likely because many see Virginia as a bellwether for the midterm elections.

The fact that the Democrats’ attorney general candidate has turned out to be a complete and total trainwreck has certainly made it a lot more interesting, too.

For the NRA, though, the gubernatorial race is of particular note. It seems America’s 1st Freedom editor-in-chief Frank Miniter believes it should really be considered a referendum on the Second Amendment.

In this autumn of 2025, as America looks just a few calendar flips ahead to its 250^th bash, there is a race in Virginia—the very state most responsible for the U.S. Bill of Rights—that should be a referendum on the Second Amendment. The fact that our right to keep and bear arms has not been so central to this race has nothing to do with the contrasting positions of its two candidates, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) and Abigail Spanberger (D).

Earle-Sears is a pro-freedom candidate who has been endorsed by the NRA Political Victory Fund. Spanberger is a vociferous gun grabber who has been endorsed by perhaps every gun-control group in the nation.

This massive difference in appreciation of our most-fundamental freedom should be an above-the-fold, much-discussed topic in this close election. Only it isn’t. The reasons for this are profound, telling and, well, they should furl your brow wherever you live, as this race could impact the 2026 battle for Congress.

First, the trouble for the anti-gun Left is this race for governor of Virginia goes against many of their anti-Second Amendment narratives—and exposes a lot of their favorite deceptions. This begins with the fact that Lt. Gov. Earle-Sears is a black woman and a first-generation immigrant (her parents brought her to the U.S. when she was six). Because of this, Spanberger’s campaign needs to somehow discount or outright ignore the immutable characteristics many in the Democratic Party have been so obsessed with of late. They also need to get voters not to even think of the lovely olive-drab U.S. Marine Corps’ uniform Earle-Sears wore from 1988 to 2000, a uniform decorated with her final rank of gunnery sergeant.

Bingo.

Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears is really inconvenient to the anti-gun narrative in so many ways. A black woman who is a proud and outspoken supporter of the Second Amendment? I mean, we’re told that black people want gun control, that women want gun control, as if they’re some monolithic group that thinks and speaks in just one voice.

She’s also an immigrant, as noted, and a legal one. 

But the difference between the two women goes beyond such superficial characteristics. Earle-Sears recognizes that our rights matter, that Virginia is the birthplace of the Bill of Rights, in many ways, including the Second Amendment. She’s a staunch defender of that right.

Virginia swings in the breeze like a windsock. Whoever takes over ends up changing every gun law on the books, only for it to swing back the other way, and the laws change once again. I’m amazed people there don’t go around with a perpetual case of whiplash because of it.

What the state needs is some consistency on gun rights. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has done a pretty decent job over these last four years of blocking the most egregious efforts by the legislature. Winsome Earle-Sears can provide consistency on those issues since Youngkin can’t be governor again this time around.

Virginia needs it.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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