Virginia House of Delegates Passes Sweeping Gun Ban

Fresh off of winning a narrow majority in last year’s elections, Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates have passed a measure that would ban sale and ownership of many common semi-automatic rifles. HB 1174 would ban the vast majority of semi-auto rifles currently lawfully owned by thousands of Virginians. According to the text, it would ban any “semi-automatic center-fire rifle that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has one of the following characteristics: (i) a folding, telescoping or collapsible stock; (ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the rifle; (iii) a second handgrip or a protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand; (iv) a grenade launcher; (v) a flare launcher; (vi) a sound suppressor; (vii) a flash suppressor; (viii) a muzzle brake; (ix) a muzzle compensator; (x) a threaded barrel capable of accepting (a) a sound suppressor, (b) a flash suppressor, (c) a muzzle brake, or (d) a muzzle compensator; or (xi) any characteristic of like kind as enumerated in clauses (i) through (x).”

The measure also bans semi-auto pistols that “expel single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine and has one of the following characteristics: (i) a folding, telescoping, or collapsible stock; (ii) a second handgrip or a protruding grip that can be held by the non-trigger hand; (iii) the capacity to accept a magazine that attaches to the pistol outside of the pistol grip; (iv) a shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel and that permits the shooter to hold the pistol with the non-trigger hand without being burned; (v) a threaded barrel capable of accepting (a) a sound suppressor, (b) a flash suppressor, (c) a barrel extender, or (d) a forward handgrip; or (vi) any characteristic of like kind as enumerated in clauses (i) through (v).” Republican Delegate Nick Freitas, a former special forces sergeant, argued against the measure, saying the focus should be on violent criminals, not firearms.

“If you take a weapon and you put it on a desk and you don’t touch it, no one gets assaulted,” Freitas said during debate of the bill. “People do assault other people, and that should be the sort of crime that we are actually going after. But again, we’re going after inanimate objects.”

Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), said this legislative session has been a tough one so far for gun-rights supporters with the slim Democrat majority.

“This is the Democrat party going back to its grassroots,” Van Cleave said in an exclusive interview with Firearms News. “In the early days it formed to protect slavery. They were the party of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan in the South, protecting slavery and trying to take away the  rights of citizens back then, especially minorities, to own guns. Fast forward 150 years and here we go again.”

A similar measure is under consideration in the state Senate, but it hasn’t yet gone to a floor vote. Van Cleave fully expects that measure to be approved and the bill be sent to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin by sometime next week. Last month when asked about the proposal at a University of Virginia event, Youngkin said: "Virginia has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. I think that the biggest gap has been in behavioral health. And, so, our big focus is to bring people together around moving aggressively around behavioral health investment. This is what Virginia needs. We have a chance to close a huge gap and I am excited to work across the aisle to get that done." Van Cleave and other gun-rights supporters are hopeful Youngkin will veto the bill, along with a couple dozen other anti-gun measures that are likely to reach his desk in the coming weeks.

“I'm optimistic that he'll veto a bunch of these,” he said. “I'm hoping he'll veto all of them, we just don't know. And we're going to begin to contact him. As soon as the first bill hits his desk I'm going to open the floodgates and we're going to hopefully have thousands and thousands of calls and emails going into his office.”

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About the Author

Freelance writer and editor Mark Chesnut is the owner/editorial director at Red Setter Communications LLC. An avid hunter, shooter and political observer, he has been covering Second Amendment issues and politics on a near-daily basis for nearly 25 years. 

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