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Virginia Democrats’ push for new gun control laws has already attracted a huge backlash. Tens of thousands of gun rights supporters rallied in the state capital, Richmond, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to protest the proposals. The majority of Virginia counties have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” that won’t enforce laws they claim are unconstitutional — a not-so-implicit threat against the new gun control proposals.
Compared to other states, though, the proposals under consideration in Virginia aren’t so radical. They would strengthen gun control laws, but they wouldn’t turn the state into the strictest in the country — far from it.
The bills that currently seem most likely to pass are universal background checks, a purchase limit for one handgun a month, a “red flag” law letting authorities temporarily seize a person’s guns if he’s deemed a threat, and a law giving local governments the ability to ban guns in public spaces during permitted events.
These measures are a far cry from, say, Massachusetts’s laws requiring a license to buy and own a firearm. They’re not anywhere as comprehensive as California’s laws, which, among other measures, ban assault weapons and require a 10-day waiting period for firearm sales. In fact, one of the Virginia proposals — the one-gun-a-month limit — simply brings back a law that was repealed in 2012.
But there are several reasons Virginia became such a focal point in the fight for stronger gun laws. For one, the state is home to the National Rifle Association’s headquarters, a testament to the state’s history as a haven for gun rights.
At the same time, Virginia has swung blue in recent years, with Virginians electing two Democratic governors, including current Gov. Ralph Northam, in a row, and flipping the legislature in 2019 to Democrats for the first time in decades. This blue surge has been fueled in part by Democrats’ very vocal support for gun control, particularly after 2019’s Virginia Beach mass shooting.
