By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
After a Lancaster County judge issued a preliminary injunction last week against enforcement of a ban on the carrying of modern semiautomatic firearms, the Virginia House of Delegates voted to delay the ban’s effective date until July 1, 2027 on a 56-34 vote.
According to The Daily Caller, the amendment was “included among recommendations by Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger,” who had signed legislation banning so-called “assault firearms” under provisions in Senate Bill 749 back in mid-May.
As bluntly explained by the Tampa Free Press, “the policy has run into a wall of legal challenges and resistance from local law enforcement, with multiple county sheriffs and prosecutors publicly stating they would refuse to enforce the new rules.”
Spanberger’s inking of the measure last month sparked lawsuits from virtually every major gun rights organization on the map. They include the National Rifle Association (NRA), Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Gun Owners of America (GOA), Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), and the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC).
Recent weeks have seen a tidal wave of gun buying in Virginia, spurred by the looming ban, which was scheduled to take effect July 1. But one gun rights group—the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms—has issued a blistering statement contending that delaying the law one year won’t solve the problem.
“Instead of delaying the effective date of this law for one year,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb observed, “Spanberger and her cronies at the capital need to completely reverse course, scrap this ban and comply with the constitution.”
The past few days have seen a flood of attention paid to Virginia by federal officials. The Daily Caller revealed that Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson going on “X” to decry delays in processing background checks by the Virginia State Police.
However, VCDL President Philip Van Cleave told the publication he thinks the slowdown is the result of sheer volume of gun transactions.
Regardless, CCRKBA’s Gottlieb says the statute which ignited this political dilemma should be thrown out by the same lawmakers who passed it.
“Gov. Spanberger and the Democrats in Richmond have only delayed a fight they started by trying to turn a constitutional right into a regulated privilege,” Gottlieb said. “And then they tried to regulate the privilege out of existence by banning modern semi-auto firearms, and got properly smacked by the court for doing so.
“It should be clear to Democrats and their media cheerleaders that Virginians, by rushing to gun stores to purchase these popular firearms ahead of the July 1 deadline, have no intention of meekly obeying this outrageous gun ban effort,” he continued in a statement to the media Tuesday morning. “And the declarations from sheriffs and county prosecutors they will not enforce provisions of SB 749, along with lawsuits filed against the law, prove beyond doubt that the governor and her party’s extremists have created a mess that a one-year delay isn’t going to clean up.
“Virginia Democrats can’t buy enough time to wash away this stain of constitutional ineptitude,” he declared. “All they’ve really accomplished is to demonstrate just how far they have moved away from the constitution they swore to uphold. Perhaps in the next election, voters in the Old Dominion will send the Democrats packing, which seems to be the only lesson they understand. As for Spanberger, it’s too late to try pretending all over again she is a moderate. She’s got one term, and by 2029, Virginians will probably have concluded that’s enough.”
