It’s not just great news it’s good news. I’m not kidding. A proposed ban in Virginia on a wide range of firearms arbitrarily labeled as assault weapons is still alive, but it’s dead. For now.
Related: Virginia: “Our entire Bill of Rights has been under assault”
Virginia House Bill 961 — “a ban under the guise of compromise” — was tabled for a full year by the state Senate Judiciary Committee. Townhall’s Lawrence Keane warned last week that the bill would have banned “the sale of semiautomatic firearms that are commonly used for self-defense, recreational and competitive shooting and hunting, as well as suppressors.” Worse, “standard capacity magazine possession would become a crime” under HD961 — or would have, had it passed. That seemed the likely result just up until minutes ago.
We had a lengthy conversation with Rick Goodman (podcast interview to be available soon). Rick is on the front lines in Virginia trying to stop these laws and defend second amendment rights. This bill was one he mentioned in our interview and his op-ed.
The Governor had an all-encompassing goal to ban “assault firearms” in Virginia. With pockets full of Bloomberg cash to fuel his campaign to carry that out via several House and Senate bills started shortly after November 5th, 2019.
These gun ban bills had very loose definitions of “assault firearms” and would have included 90% of modern semi-auto long arms as well as most modern semi-auto handguns. It also included suppressors, magazines with a capacity over 12 rounds and any firearm that they were compatible with and trigger activator devices. Are they after our fingers now? The Senate bill was pulled to make room for a more restrictive House bill. The author of this bill was Delegate Mark Levine from Fairfax, VA. He became internet famous after his January 25th, 2020 town hall, where he provided a hilarious pantomime of what an assault weapon is.
With the Senate Bill pulled and the House Bill tabled, this is one issue that will wait a year before it returns but it will return. But don’t expect Gun Rights activists like Rick or the Virginal Citizens Defense League to wait around. They’ll be working to recruit and educate citizens and to encourage their various representatives of the issues and problems with the proposed legislation and its likely impact on their political future.
Not every Democrat cares about that, but like New Hampshire, many of the Democrats in Virginia that found themselves in the office are form places where the people would be just as happy to have someone else represent them.
But you have to show up and vote or you don’t get to decide.
| PJMedia
