Virginia’s governor signed a card table’s worth of new restrictions on law-abiding Virginians in a single afternoon — and called it “commonsense.” They always do.
Governor Abigail Spanberger walked into the Virginia State Capitol on June 17 and signed eighteen separate gun bills into law in one sitting. Eighteen. In one afternoon. That’s not a legislative agenda — that’s a Cheesecake Factory menu.
And naturally they called it “commonsense.” It’s always commonsense, isn’t it? Nobody ever steps up to a podium and announces, “Today we’re criminalizing people who’ve never broken a law.” No — they wheel out the doctors and the students, line them up behind the governor, and quietly rewrite what it means to own a rifle in the Commonwealth while everybody claps.
Reading the Menu
Let’s read the menu, because the details are where the damage lives, and they’re betting you won’t bother.
There’s HB217 and SB749, banning the future sale of “assault-style weapons.” HB1524 bans carrying those same rifles in public. HB1525 closes what they’ve branded the “Lynchburg Loophole” — which is a fancy way of saying universal background checks are back, so good luck handing a hunting rifle to your nephew without a permission slip from Richmond.
They closed the “Boyfriend Loophole” with HB19. They mandated “safe storage” with HB871 and SB348 — the Commonwealth of Virginia now has firm opinions about which drawer you keep your handgun in. And HB110 and SB496 turn it into a legal matter if you leave a handgun in an unattended vehicle, because apparently the legislature knows the inside of your truck better than you do.
There’s a bill cracking down on “ghost guns.” A bill letting the state sue gun manufacturers for “negligent business practices.” A bill inventing a government job title called “Violence Prevention Professional,” which is a creative way to describe a new payroll line. And there’s a “Gun Violence Prevention Center Workgroup,” because no expansion of government is complete without a workgroup assigned to plan the next one.
“Commonsense” Is Doing a Lot of Heavy Lifting
Here’s the trick buried in the word “commonsense.” It’s engineered so that if you object to one single bill out of eighteen, you’re against common sense itself. You’re against safe kids. You’re for the loophole. And notice they never call the loophole what it actually is — the right of a free American to buy a rifle from his neighbor without filling out a form.
Watch the logic once you let it off the leash. First it’s the future sale of certain rifles. Then it’s carrying them in public. Then it’s background checks on a private handoff. Then it’s which cupboard you store the gun in, and whether you parked it in the wrong cupholder. Every step is “commonsense.” Every step makes the next one easier. Give it two more sessions and “commonsense” will be dictating how many rounds you’re allowed to feel safe with — oh, wait. She did that one back in May, when she signed the 15-round magazine cap.
That’s the part that never makes the press release. June 17 wasn’t the beginning of anything. Spanberger already signed the assault-weapons and magazine ban in May, and a dozen more gun bills back in April. The June stack was just dessert.
We’ve Seen This Movie
Here’s what every “historic” gun-grabber in Richmond keeps forgetting: we’ve watched this movie, and we already know how it ends.
Roll the tape back to 1994. Congress passed the federal assault weapons ban, the Democrats spiked the football — and that November, voters across the rural South and West handed them both the House and the Senate, the first Republican sweep in forty years. Newt Gingrich practically mailed them a thank-you card. The gun grab didn’t stop crime. It stopped Democratic majorities.
Virginia ran its own version more recently. The last time Richmond Democrats had full control — 2020 and 2021 — they passed their gun package and congratulated themselves. Then 95 percent of Virginia’s counties declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries and refused to play along, and a Republican named Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s mansion in a state Joe Biden had carried by ten points. Spanberger’s party studied that wreckage for about five minutes and concluded the lesson was “do it again, but eighteen bills at once.”
And here’s the kicker nobody at the signing ceremony mentioned: a law isn’t a law until somebody enforces it. Commonwealth’s attorneys across Virginia have already announced they won’t prosecute the “assault firearms” ban — “I won’t criminalize law-abiding citizens,” as one of them put it. The NRA, Gun Owners of America, and the Virginia Citizens Defense League have all sued. So Spanberger has eighteen shiny new statutes and a growing list of the people who actually run the courtrooms telling her to pound sand.
So picture the trajectory. The NRA sues. The prosecutors refuse. The sheriffs shrug. The sanctuary counties dust off their 2020 resolutions. And the same suburban moms and rural deer hunters who fired this crowd in 2021 are watching Richmond declare that their lawful rifle is now a public-carry crime and their gun safe is the state’s business.
She signed eighteen bills and called it common sense. Virginia has done this exact dance before — and it didn’t end with the Democrats dancing. Remember that in November.
