Who is the best gun salesperson in Virginia? Abigail Spanberger—that’s who.
According to the FBI background check registry—more about that in a moment—there were 124,319 firearm background checks conducted just in the month of June. Wrap your head around that. That’s more privately owned firearms sold just in June than exist in the entire country of Iran—that is, unless you count the ones all the Kurds kept that were supposed to be distributed to civilians so they could stand up to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but I digress.
What has Virginians rushing out to their local gun shops and gun shows to make sure they can defend themselves is the idea that maybe they won’t be able to very soon.
Two Virginia judges have issued preliminary injunctions blocking the enforcement of the assault weapons ban.
A Washington County judge granted the most recent injunction, and a Lancaster County judge issued a similar order the week before. Attorney General Jay Jones claims that these only impact Washington and Lancaster counties and not the state at large. However, the list of law enforcement officers and commonwealth’s attorneys who refuse to enforce these restrictions—calling them unconstitutional—continues to grow.
As of this writing, the sheriffs of Augusta, Appomattox, Clarke, Floyd, Hanover, Henry, Louisa, Patrick, Powhatan, Scott, Shenandoah, Spotsylvania, and Warren counties have all said they will not enforce the gun ban. So far, the commonwealth’s attorneys in Amherst, Appomattox, Buckingham, Campbell, Charlotte, Clarke, Floyd, Goochland, Lynchburg, Page, Powhatan, Pulaski, Scott, Shenandoah, Smyth, Spotsylvania, and Warren counties have also said they will not prosecute offenders who are in violation of these laws.
Opponents of this action claim that until such laws are declared unconstitutional by the courts, these officers and attorneys are bound by their oath to enforce laws dutifully legislated by the General Assembly and signed by the governor.
The sheriffs and commonwealth’s attorneys point to their oath of office, which says that they will uphold the Constitution of the United States and that anything that restricts the Second Amendment is in violation of that oath.
In case the fireworks weren’t a dead giveaway, we are now several days into July and well past the date these gun laws were supposed to go into effect. So what is the schedule?
The Lancaster injunction in the Crump v. Katz case has an expiration date of Dec. 31 of this year. This is the one that prevents Virginia State Police from enforcing the ban on the “sale, manufacture, import, purchase or transfer of the covered semi-automatic firearms and magazines over 15 rounds.”
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche also announced that on July 1 the Department of Justice filed its own federal lawsuit seeking to block the enforcement of these gun laws.
The “covered semi-automatic firearms” are listed as “semi-automatic centerfire rifles or pistols that accept a detachable magazine and have at least one rifle feature; defined as folding, telescoping, or collapsible stocks; a thumbhole stock; pistol grip; second handgrip; grenade launcher; or threaded barrel capable of accepting muzzle devices or two pistol features for pistols.”
I mentioned at the start where the staggering statistics came from. This is important to the information because much of the campaign in favor of these laws depends on selling you the idea that background checks are hardly ever done. Wrong.
The owner of Tobey’s Pawn Shop in Charlottesville (also a gun sales location) told me the last time this rush happened, at the beginning of the Gov. Ralph Northam administration, that lifelong Democrats were buying their first guns and exclaimed: “I had no idea that there was so much paperwork involved!”
Thanks for playing.
Aside from the gun-owning public, the accidental beneficiaries of these injunctions will be Democrat congressional candidates in the midterms because when queried by potential voters about the laws, they simply say, “That’s in the courts right now, and I’m focused on …” (insert whatever their opponents are weak on.)
Meanwhile, Republicans need to be rallying toward next year’s General Assembly elections under this ban to hopefully increase turnout above 35-40%.
Maybe some of those 124,000 new gun owners might be new voters as well.
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