NRA-ILA | Virginia Bills Spark Gun-Buying Boom, Warning from DOJ

As your NRA-ILA has reported over the last several weeks, the Democrat-controlled Virginia General Assembly and Governor Abigail Spanberger (D) have, between them, approved a sweeping array of radical gun control bills aimed, as NRA’s John Commerford says, “at extinguish[ing] the meaningful exercise of Second Amendment rights in the commonwealth in one fell swoop.”

Among other things, House Bill 217/ Senate Bill 749 ban the future import, sale and purchase of “assault firearms” (commonly-owned centerfire semi-automatic rifles and pistols) and generally any magazine capable of holding, or being converted to hold, more than 15 rounds.

 A governor’s amendment to change the definition in the “assault firearm” bill  further aggravated matters by creating fresh uncertainty as to which firearms might come within the prohibited class, despite the governor’s press release claiming that her amendments “provide clarity for both responsible gun owners and law enforcement, making clear what these changes mean in practice.” In a further twist of the knife, the press release quotes Spanberger’s patently ludicrous claim, “I support the Second Amendment.” 

The “assault firearms” law doesn’t prohibit the possession of guns that were bought or owned before July 1, 2026. Now, Virginians are voting with their wallets and their feet to stock up on the soon-to-be unobtainable guns before the deadline arrives.

Mitchell Tyler, a Roanoke gun shop owner, advised that sales had started to climb once the state’s legislative session began: “I’d say we’re selling eight to ten times as many firearms each day as we were prior to this session starting,” and “customers who would normally rent semi-automatic firearms at [our] range are now purchasing them.” According to The Farmville Herald, the 79,846 firearm background checks initiated in Virginia in March amounted to “one of the highest monthly totals since the surges in March and June 2020.” The owner of Knight and Pawn in Henrico County, quoted about his gun sales boom, said “We’re talking at least quadruple the volume that I was doing before that.” Even Bloomberg’s gun control propaganda shop The Trace acknowledges, in its Monthly Firearm Sales Estimates (click on “Skip to Data”), that Virginia gun sales for March 2026 were 56% higher than sales in the previous March, and represented an 11% increase over sales in February 2026.

Virginia’s efforts to dismantle gun rights have also attracted the attention of the United States Department of Justice, with U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon giving Governor Spanberger “formal notice” that the Civil Rights Division “will commence litigation” against laws that “unconstitutionally limit law-abiding Americans’ right to bear arms.” The letter specifically points to SB 749, noting that “the right to own and use AR-15 style semiautomatic rifles for lawful purposes” is constitutionally protected, and it concludes with an emphatic “[t]he Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens shall not be infringed.”  

Dhillon’s official X account indicates that Jay Jones, Virginia’s Attorney General (the guy who had “fantasized about shooting” a GOP legislator) reportedly called the letter a “threat” and “distortion of the very purpose of the Office of Civil Rights, abandoning the protection of the disenfranchised in favor of keeping weapons of mass murder on the streets.” Commendably, Dhillon on X dismissed that with “[n]o amount of hyperventilating demagoguery will prevent this @TheJusticeDept @CivilRights from protecting the rights of all law-abiding citizens to keep and bear lawful arms.”

We certainly hope so. One thing is obvious: the more anti-gun lawmakers press their unconstitutional incursions of Second Amendment rights, the greater the grassroots resistance from ordinary, responsible Americans, driving up the number of gun sales and new gun owners to exceptional highs. Stay tuned, as there are almost certainly going to be fresh developments.