Virginia Judge Set to Hear Arguments Over Renewed ‘Universal’ Background Checks

The Virginia judge who ruled the state’s “universal” background scheme was an unconstitutional violation of equal protection laws is set to hear arguments in two competing motions on Wednesday; one from the plaintiffs in the ligitation who say the head of the Virginia State Police should be held in contempt for resuming the background checks even though an injunction against enforcement remains in place, and a competing motion from anti-gun Attorney General Jay Jones, who argues the injunction should be dissolved but has also been rendered moot through a new piece of gun control legislation. 

In their response to the AG’s argument, Gun Owners of America and Virginia Citizens Defense League contend that the new law actually makes things worse from a constitutional perspective. Judge F. Patrick Yeatts has been dealing with this issue for several years now, and has previously ruled that adults under the age of 21 have the right to possess a handgun. Under newly passed HB 1525, though, that right has been stripped from them in an attempt to impose the same NICS check on all private transfers. Any NICS check on a handgun purchase is going to be flagged by the system given the federal prohibition on commercial handgun sales to under-21s, and the state of Virginia had previously tried to get around that by running checks on private sales of handguns to young adults through a system administered by the VSP. 

Yeatts held that to be a violation of equal protection laws, so Democrats responded by making it a crime for an adult younger than 21 to purchase a handgun under any circumstances. GOA and VCDL argue that by doing so, the state is still running afoul of the judge’s previous rulings. 

That, however, isn’t the only defect in Jones’s argument the 2A groups are highlighting.

He claims this enactment is currently effective on an “emergency” basis, despite the legislation’s failure to reach four-fifths supermajority support in the General Assembly, as the Virginia Constitution requires for such an “emergency” enactment. And worse still, Jay Jones insists that Defendant is not in contempt of this Court’s injunction, despite Defendant’s direct admission that he is doing the very thing this Court ordered him not to do – administering and enforcing Va. Code § 18.2-308.2:5, the private-sale firearm background check statute that this Court invalidated. In a word, this Attorney General – and Defendant – refuse to take this Court’s ‘no’ for an answer. They intend to violate Virginians’ constitutional rights regardless of what this Court says.

Jones claims that Judge Yeatts “invited the General Assembly to ‘rewrite the law to create a system that does not impose disparate treatment based on age,’” and claims HB 1525 “did just that.” 

As the plaintiffs argue, “it is impossible to see how HB1525’s language that ‘[i]tis unlawful for any person younger than 21 years of age to knowingly and intentionally purchasea handgun’ is anything but ‘disparate treatment based on age.'”

To the contrary, HB1525 codified precisely the “constitutional infirmity” this Court repudiated – the prevention of 18-to-20-year olds from purchasing handguns. Enacting a law that prevents 18-to-20-year-old adults from acquiring handguns is, as this Court found, as invalid under Article I, Section 13 as it is under equal protection. Indeed, there is “no legitimate government interest” in enacting such an “age-based classification[]….” HB1525 neither cures nor works around this Court’s constitutional ruling. Rather, HB1525 blatantly defies it.

Yeatts has never said that all background checks are unconstitutional. In fact, he’s never even said that a “universal” background check mandate that covered private transfers would violate Virginia’s constitution. What he has said, though, is that there’s nothing in the history or tradition of the right to keep and bear arms that suggests adults under 21 can be prohibited from purchasing or possessing the most common firearm for self-defense, and that the “universal” background check schemes the Democrats have come up with treat those young adults differently than any other adult purchasing a firearm. 

For his part, Jones has simply tried to avoid any discussion about the rights of young adults to purchase handguns, despite the fact that Virginia’s constitution makes it clear adulthood begins at 18 years of age, and Judge Yeatts has already said 18-to-20-year-olds are fully vested with their Second Amendment rights. 

I suspect that avoidance strategy is going to run into a very skeptical judge when oral arguments take place in Lynchburg Circuit Court tomorrow. Jones and Gov. Abigail Spanberger have essentially decided that no judge from the sticks is going to stand in the way of enforcing a gun control law, and I don’t think that attitude or their legal arguments are going to go over well in Judge Yeatts’s courtroom. 

If I were a betting man I’d put money on GOA and VCDL emerging victorious, and given the fact that background checks have already resumed, I don’t think Yeatts will take too long in rendering a verdict. He might even issue his opinion from the bench upon the conclusion of oral arguments… one that hopefully will side with the plaintiffs and their request to keep the injunction in place and hit the head of the VSP with a finding of contempt. 

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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