Virginia Dems Impose Radical New Gun-Buying Restriction
You can’t commit more crimes if you have more handguns.
This should be a no-brainer. You only have two hands, after all, and unless you’re going to recruit a phalanx of handgun-wielding violence junkies, banning you from buying more than one handgun a month won’t make any difference.
That’s why, before Wednesday, 47 states didn’t bother with that kind of ridiculous regulation. That number was just reduced to 46 thanks to Virginia, home to Democrats uniquely obsessed with gun control and newly ensconced in statehouse power.
The state’s one-handgun-a-month policy, one of the most restrictive in the nation, was part of a suite of new policies pushed by state Democrats once they got control of the legislature after the 2019 elections.
They currently have the governor’s mansion, too, with Democrat Ralph Northam in power until January 2022.
While headline-grabbing measures such as a ban on so-called assault weapons failed, a whole host of new gun control measures went into effect on Wednesday, including a “red flag” law, universal background checks and new penalties if children get access to guns.
None of those, however, is likely to cause as much of a stir as the state’s handgun limit.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, gun rights proponents such as the Virginia Citizens Defense League tried to block the law from going into effect but were unable to get a hearing before the implementation of the law.
“People are not going to be happy with this,” Philip Van Cleave, president of the VCDL, told the outlet.
“They’re not going to forget about what they’ve [Democrats] done, so it’ll be curious to see the elections in 2021 in Virginia. It might be curious to see the elections in 2020.”
According to WAMU-FM, the handgun limit — which was formerly law until it was repealed in 2012 — has survived one court challenge already. The Goochland County Circuit Court ruled against the plaintiffs, who argued that the law interfered with their “constitutionally protected right to obtain firearms.”
The judge also refused to grant a last-minute stay of the law the same groups petitioned for.
“Gov. Northam wants a repeat of this failed law, which was previously repealed in 2012,” Erich Pratt, senior vice president of the Gun Owners Foundation and Gun Owners of America, said in a June 15 news release.
“In the past eight years, Virginia was ranked as one of the safest states in the country. This shows that the radical push for gun control has nothing to do with reducing crime, but rather is about implementing a disarmament agenda.”
In an interview with The Free Beacon, Pratt said, “This law forces honest citizens to prove their innocence to the government in order to acquire a firearm. By making the ability to acquire a firearm so burdensome, Universal Background Checks flip a right that ‘shall not be infringed’ on its head.”
The only states that have the limit on the number of gun purchases per month at present are California, Maryland and New Jersey. All of those are very blue states, for the most part. (Maryland’s governor is currently a Republican, a rarity in the state, but the law predated him.)
This isn’t just a hindrance to citizens’ ability to acquire firearms, a Second Amendment right. It’s also a problem for gun stores; according to Fox Business, they expect to see their business “plummet.”
In an interview with Fox Business, Steve Garriss, a sales clerk with Clark Brother Gun Shop in Warrenton, said the previous one-handgun-a-month law severely limited handgun sales.
“The one-handgun-a-month thing, they had that when I first started working here. They discontinued it. … You do lose sales from it,” Garriss said.
“Some people come in, they bought one two weeks ago. Two weeks later, they may not be interested.”
Defenders of gun rights plan to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.
“We think we have a strong case,” Van Cleave said. “We don’t ration any other rights.”
It’s also worth noting that the supposed right to an abortion — a right that was miraculously discovered in the Constitution by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade — is now so sacrosanct that, as per Planned Parenthood v. Casey, no state law can put an “undue burden” on a woman seeking one.
OK, fine. Now try the Second Amendment.
You hope the nation’s highest court will, although it’s any guess how Chief Justice John Roberts will vote these days.
Whatever the case, there’s no evidence this law will prevent crime. Criminals will merely circumvent it. People legally acquiring guns won’t be more likely to commit crimes the more firearms they have.
All Virginia has accomplished is to put in place another meaningless level of red tape that abrogates citizens’ ability to exercise their God-given constitutional rights.
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