Virginia is the epitome of a swing state, at least over the last few years. From far left Democrats to conservative Republicans and back again, the state seems to swing like an unlatched screen door in a hurricane.
Now the state has gone from Glenn Youngkin to Abigail Spanberger, and with her comes a litany of anti-gun proposals that Democrats in the Old Dominion State have long wanted to implement.
And as NRA executive director John Commerford notes, this marks a change in the Second Amendment in Virginia.
Perhaps no state is more steeped in America’s constitutional and political history than Virginia. It has birthed more U.S. presidents than any other state, including the country’s first, whose military leadership during the Revolutionary War helped secure American independence. Virginia has been called the “Mother of Presidents” and George Washington the “Father of our Nation.”
Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence and America’s third president, was also a Virginian. So was James Madison, fourth president, who is known as the “Father of the Constitution” for his leading role in drafting that founding charter, as well as the Bill of Rights.
Virginia was the scene of pivotal battles during the Revolutionary War, including the siege of Yorktown, and some of the fiercest fighting of the Civil War, including at Bull Run, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Its soil is deeply infused with the blood of patriots.
And yet Virginians who value their right to arms now face unprecedented peril. We have a governor whose view of politics was shaped by Moms Demand Action for Gun Safety, a firearm-prohibition group. We have an attorney general who fantasizes about how the violent death of his political opponents’ children might change their minds on gun control. And we have a legislature that has already delivered enough gun control to our outgoing governor’s desk to flip Virginia from a moderate, pro-gun state to an unrecognizably extreme gun-control stronghold. Only Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s stalwart vetoes of dozens of bills—including a broad ban on semi-automatic rifles—have kept the anti-gun tide at bay.
These are, to say the least, a far cry from the days of Virginia Gov. Patrick Henry and his immortal rallying cry, “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Now, the last checks left on gun control are the relative brevity of Virginia’s 60-day legislative session and the hope that other priorities will compete for the General Assembly’s attention.
Commerford notes that the state is already considering their own bill to get around the Protection for Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and the new attorney general is suing to extend a deadline in a case challenging the state’s attempted ban on private gun sales.
This is Virginia, though, which Commerford notes isn’t San Francisco or New York City, communities that have long embraced the euro-trash ideals that include the concept that the right to keep and bear arms doesn’t actually exist.
However, this is also Virginia, where a whole lot of people who work inside the beltway live. While DOGE promised to potentially clear those folks out of the state by removing their livelihood, that didn’t really materialize, and they voted for the extreme left of American politics, where the new Democratic rulers seek to raise taxes, stomp on gun rights, and generally make life horrible for those who live there.
And because Virginia isn’t really thought of as an extreme leftist state, the ramifications of this might well filter throughout the rest of the nation as the media frames these proposals as the new moderate ideas.
If gun control doesn’t happen in the state, it’ll only be because they just didn’t have time to get around to it.
Maybe it’s just me, but that’s not exactly a winning strategy for gun rights.
Yes, we will challenge whatever they put in place, and we stand a solid chance of winning if the courts correctly apply the Bruen decision to the case, but we shouldn’t have to go through all of that.
Virginia is entering a dark time, but we all may be entering it as well as these horrific ideas get exported and framed as being moderate, because too many people still think the news doesn’t lie to you.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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