Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) just signed a bill banning the sale of so-called assault firearms and magazines holding more than 15 rounds. The NRA sued almost immediately, arguing Virginia crossed a constitutional line.
Writing at our sister site, Bearing Arms, Tom Knighton summarized Spanberger's circus as only he can do it.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger ran as a moderate Democrat. She made many campaign promises and has already turned her back on pretty much all of them. Rather than focusing on affordability, as she and her fellow Dems promised, they immediately went to work on gerrymandering the state and passing gun control.
The gerrymandering thing blew up in their faces, but gun control? They can still do that, for now at least, and Spanberger took the last step on two controversial measures.
That's right, Virginia has an assault weapon ban and a magazine limit.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed into law Thursday a ban on the sale of assault firearms and high-capacity magazines, while allowing people who already own them to keep them.
The law makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to import, sell, manufacture, purchase, or transfer an assault firearm. Anyone convicted of that violation is prohibited from purchasing, possessing, or transporting any firearm for three years from the date of conviction.
The ban does not apply to certain weapons, including antique firearms or firearms that have been rendered permanently inoperable.
Spanberger had proposed amendments to the legislation, but it was rejected by lawmakers during the April reconvened session. Her options at that point were to veto the legislation, let it become law without her signature, or sign it into law.
“I am signing this bill into law because firearms designed to inflict maximum casualties do not belong on our streets. We are taking this step to protect families and support the law enforcement officers who work every day to keep our communities safe,” said Spanberger in a statement to CBS 6. “While the General Assembly chose not to adopt my amendment that specifically carves out certain firearms frequently used for hunting, I will work with the patrons to clarify this language.”
If there's any good news to this, it's that this ban is one that relies on “evil features” rather than banning gas-operated semi-automatic firearms, but that's not any consolation.
Spanberger framed the bill as public safety, while gun owners heard the same old song, only Richmond conducting the band. Writing at Breitbart, AWR Hawkins clarified Spanberger's concerns over safety.
On March 9, 2026, Breitbart News reported the ban had cleared the Virginia legislature and was headed to Spanberger’s desk.
Ammoland News noted that the legislation, SB 749, specifies that “importing, selling, purchasing, or transferring a prohibited firearm would be a Class 1 misdemeanor.” It also “restricts the sale or transfer of certain large-capacity magazines defined in the statute.”
SB 749 also bans a number of semiautomatic shotguns and certain semiautomatic, centerfire pistols, WRIC reported
WTVR pointed out that Spanberger signed the ban Thursday and subsequently released a statement, which said in part, “I am signing this bill into law because firearms designed to inflict maximum casualties do not belong on our streets. We are taking this step to protect families and support the law enforcement officers who work every day to keep our communities safe.”
On April 10, 2026, Breitbart News noted that Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon made clear the DOJ would sue Virginia if Spanberger signed the “assault weapons” ban. Time to watch and see.
Minnesota Democrats tried a similar push; the state Senate approved a gun-control package that included bans on assault-style weapons and large-capacity magazines, but the House never brought it to a final vote.
House Speaker Lisa Demuth, a Minnesota Republican candidate for governor, said gun bans weren't the answer. Minnesota state Rep. Samantha Sencer-Mura, a Democrat from Minneapolis, helped lead an overnight sit-in after the bill stalled.
All the crying in St. Paul ended up making my knees hurt. As the Guardian reports, the Democrats wore their angry eyebrows.
Democratic state representatives in Minnesota staged an overnight sit-in in their house chamber on Thursday after the Republican speaker failed to put a gun violence prevention bill up for a vote.
Samantha Sencer-Mura, a Democratic representative from Minneapolis, first announced the plan on Wednesday from the floor of the state’s house of representatives, giving the speaker, Lisa Demuth, a candidate for governor, 24 hours to give the bill a vote before the sit-in would start.
The sit-in began around 9pm local time. Lawmakers intend to stay until the house comes back in session, which is set for Saturday at noon.
Sencer-Mura had set a deadline of 5pm on Thursday. A procedural motion to bring the bill to a vote failed just before 9pm.
The lawmakers participating in the sit-in intended to stay in the chamber overnight, Sencer-Mura said. The local Fox affiliate reported that about 20 Democratic lawmakers intended to participate.
“What is speaker Lisa Demuth so afraid of? The very fact that she’s breaking her promise to Annunciation families to not block the bill from coming to the floor, tells me that she’s afraid it will pass,” Sencer-Mura said in a statement. “She’s afraid that her members are hearing their constituents, and are going to choose to be on the right side of history.
“This is a serious action to fight for serious solutions. Minnesotans deserve to be safe.”
Demuth’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Gov. Tim Walz backed the restrictions, which surprises absolutely nobody with a working memory.
Not wanting to be left out, Louisville entered the act, too. Twenty-two Metro Council members sent a letter to Kentucky General Assembly leaders asking for help on gun restrictions. Another great summary by Tom Knighton writing at Bearing Arms.
As a relatively large city (Louisville), its sensibilities are more akin to those of other large urban centers, as opposed to the more rural parts of the Bluegrass State.
And now they're asking the legislature to pass gun control, all for their own alleged benefits, and to ignore the wishes of the rest of the state.
Twenty-two Metro Council members sent a letter to state leaders Friday asking for help tackling gun violence in Louisville.
The bipartisan letter, addressed to Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker David Osborne, asks the Kentucky General Assembly to partner with Metro Council, Mayor Craig Greenberg and Louisville Metro Police Chief Paul Humphrey on locally driven solutions to reduce violence.
“Members of both parties came to me shortly before the last iteration of it and asked if they could spend three weeks trying to put together a letter that more than just 14 could sign,” District 4 Councilman Ken Herndon said. “They came up with a pretty solid letter that 22 of us agreed to sign.”
The letter is the latest push in an effort called “Kids Over Guns,” first introduced by Herndon.
“The state in 2012 took away every city’s right to have their own gun laws,” Herndon said. “And Kids Over Guns, that resolution was to ask them to let Jefferson County have our own, just us, not the rest of the state.”
The letter asks the General Assembly to ban Glock switches, which convert semi-automatic firearms into automatic weapons. House Bill 299 passed the House with overwhelming support during the most recent legislative session but failed to reach the governor’s desk. The letter notes that 26 other states, including Indiana, have passed similar bans.
The council members also request the ability to require background checks for all firearm sales, implement waiting periods for first-time buyers or require buyers to obtain a concealed carry license, and support gun amnesty and buyback programs.
In other words, they want all of the things that aren't working in California, Illinois, New York, and other anti-gun spaces, and screw what the rest of the state really wants.
Oh, and let's not forget the whole repeal of preemption thing, because that's the big one, even though it should be obvious to anyone that local gun control is even worse at stopping criminals than state gun control laws are. You want universal background checks? Fine, we'll cross the city limits and conduct the transaction.
And permitting requirements were a thing for a while in Kentucky, and Louisville never really managed to stop criminals from carrying without one. Weird, isn't it?
Councilmember Ginny Mulvey-Woolridge (R) said the goal was to address public safety problems across Louisville. Councilman Ken Herndon (D) has also pushed the “Kids Over Guns” resolution, which asks Frankfort to let Louisville write its own gun rules.
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Democrats have chased gun restrictions for generations, and the question always comes back to one word: Why?
Power explains most of it; armed Americans make sweeping government control more difficult. They don't make it impossible, but they force politicians to remember regular people aren't furniture waiting to be rearranged. Self-defense remains one of the last stubborn areas where government can't fully insert itself between the means and the individual.
Gun-control advocates also blame the tool before confronting the criminal. Laws against murder already exist. Laws against robbery already exist. Laws against illegally possessing firearms already exist. Violent criminals blow through those laws like stop signs in a stolen car, then lawmakers respond by writing new rules for people who obeyed the old ones.
Disarmament also shifts dependency toward government. An American who can defend his home, family, and property doesn't need to wait helplessly while seconds crawl by and police are still minutes away.
Gun ownership gives people agency; bigger government prefers managed fear because fear becomes political leverage.
International examples keep tempting American gun-control activists. Canada banned more than 2,500 makes and models of assault-style firearms and froze most handgun sales. New Zealand kept a near-total ban on semiautomatic firearms after the 2019 Christchurch attack. England and Wales require police-issued certificates for many firearms and shotguns. Those systems treat gun ownership as government permission, not a natural right.
The strategy works by inches; first comes a magazine limit, then comes a ban on a rifle style. Afterward comes a licensing demand, a registry, a storage rule, a buyback, an amnesty deadline, and finally the threat of criminal liability.
Nobody calls it confiscation at the beginning; they save the ugly vocabulary for later, after people have grown tired of fighting.
Virginia, Minnesota, and Louisville are part of a larger map, drawn over decades by politicians who see the Second Amendment as a problem to be managed instead of a right to be honored.
Armed Americans don't threaten freedom; they preserve the warning label the government always needs to read before it gets ambitious.
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