Three Virginia gun laws worse than the AR-15 ban

The bottom line

The assault weapons ban is getting all the attention. It shouldn’t. There are three other laws buried in Virginia’s 2026 gun control blitz that are more dangerous, more draconian, and a lot more likely to put innocent people in prison. Democrats flooded the zone on purpose. They passed 18 gun control bills at once knowing most people would only read about one of them. I’m not going to let that work.

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This article is based on analysis from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.

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On April 13, 2026, Governor Abigail Spanberger signed 18 gun control bills into law. The one everyone’s talking about is HB217, the assault weapons ban banning the sale and transfer of semi-automatic firearms classified as “assault firearms.” Bad law. Unconstitutional. I think it gets overturned within a year or two. The DOJ already warned Virginia it will sue, and every major Second Amendment organization from the NRA-ILA to Gun Owners of America to the Firearms Policy Coalition is lining up to challenge it. The Supreme Court’s Bruen decision made this kind of categorical ban nearly indefensible under the text-and-tradition test. HB217 is bad, but it’s a temporary pause on new sales. It’s not the worst thing that happened to Virginia gun owners this week.

Three other laws in that package are worse, and they’re barely being discussed.

HB40: the ghost gun trap

HB40 bans unserialized and 3D-printed firearms. Fine, I understand the political optics. But how they wrote it is unconscionable.

There is no grandfather clause. Not even a delayed one. If you legally built an 80% lower kit last year, perfectly legal at the time, done following every rule, maybe you spent $400 on parts and a weekend of your time, that firearm is now contraband. The law doesn’t care when you made it. It doesn’t care that you did everything right. As Ammoland reported when Spanberger signed it, the possession ban takes effect July 1, 2027, which gives existing owners a window, but there is no path to grandfathering. You either serialize your weapon with the state or you become a criminal.

First offense is a Class 1 misdemeanor. Second offense, meaning you own two unserialized firearms, is a Class 4 felony. That’s a mandatory minimum of two years. Up to ten.

Think about who actually gets caught by this. It’s not criminals. Criminals don’t comply with serialization requirements. It’s the guy who built his own AR a few years ago as a hobby project, doesn’t keep up with the news, and one day uses that firearm in legitimate self-defense. Police show up, see the unserialized lower, and now the victim is a felon. That’s how HB40 gets enforced in practice, and Virginia Democrats knew it when they voted for it.

This law will put innocent people in prison. The NRA-ILA flagged this bill as one of the most dangerous in the entire package when it cleared the General Assembly. They were right.

HB1524: the carry ban that catches everyone

HB1524 bans carrying what it defines as “assault firearms” in any public area. Any street. Any sidewalk. Any park. Any place open to the public. Statewide. No exception for concealed handgun permit holders.

HB1524 uses the same seven-category definition as HB217’s assault weapons ban. For rifles, it’s a one-feature test: folding stock, threaded barrel, pistol grip, or fixed magazine over 15 rounds, plus a detachable magazine. For pistols, you need two features. The governor’s substitute restored the word “loaded,” so unloaded transport isn’t banned under that version, but carrying a loaded rifle that fits the definition anywhere in Virginia is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

The enrolled version that passed the General Assembly was worse. It stripped “loaded” entirely, meaning even an unloaded, cased rifle on a public sidewalk would have been a crime. The governor pulled that back slightly, but the statewide scope and the elimination of the CHP exemption remain in both versions.

I think HB1524 is actually the most legally vulnerable of the entire package. The Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling established that the government bears the burden of identifying a historical tradition of restricting public carry of arms in common use. There is no such tradition for a statewide ban on carrying common semi-automatic rifles. Cases like VCDL v. Northam established prior limits on what Virginia can do with public carry restrictions. This one is so broad it’s almost begging for an injunction.

But until the courts step in, people are going to get arrested over it. People who have no idea this law exists. That’s the point of flooding the zone with 18 bills at once.

SB115: the reciprocity kill nobody noticed

This one didn’t make national news. It probably should have.

SB115 strips the Superintendent of State Police of any obligation to maintain reciprocity agreements with other states. Going forward, Virginia will only honor out-of-state concealed handgun permits if the Attorney General decides that state’s requirements are “substantially similar” to Virginia’s. The current AG, Jason Miyares, is a Republican, but this law sets up a structural mechanism that survives whoever holds that office. Virginia’s new training requirements under HB916 removed the old requirement that courses be conducted by NRA or USCCA specifically, opening the door to a broader range of training providers while still allowing NRA- and USCCA-certified instructors. The “substantially similar” standard is a moving target that future Democratic AGs can interpret however they want. The bill passed the House 62-33 and the Senate 21-18 on March 13, 2026.

I live in North Carolina. I drive into Virginia regularly. Before April 13, my North Carolina CHP was recognized in Virginia. After April 13, that recognition could be revoked by December 2026 if the State Police review determines NC’s requirements aren’t “substantially similar.” If I’m carrying legally under my home state’s permit and driving through Virginia, I could now be committing a crime without knowing it.

That’s not hypothetical for me. It’s my life. And it’s the life of hundreds of thousands of permit holders from neighboring states who have been visiting and traveling through Virginia for years under good-faith reliance on reciprocity.

The law also restricts Virginia residents from obtaining non-resident permits from states with less stringent requirements. It’s a wall built in both directions, and the whole thing is calibrated to make Virginia a harder place to legally carry a firearm.

What the Democrats actually did

The reason to pass 18 bills at once is tactical. Most of the media coverage goes to the headline law, in this case the AR-15 ban. Gun owners focus their energy there. Advocacy groups devote their litigation budgets there. The other 17 laws get normalized through obscurity.

HB21, which creates a new civil liability framework letting any member of the public sue firearm dealers and manufacturers for “reasonable controls” violations that aren’t actually defined anywhere in the bill, got maybe five percent of the coverage HB217 received. It has the potential to do more long-term damage to Virginia’s gun culture than the assault weapons ban. Shooting News Weekly called it weaponizing Virginia’s legal system against gun dealers. The undefined “reasonable controls” standard is going to generate years of litigation and drive up costs for every FFL in the state, potentially putting smaller shops out of business before any court ever rules on the merits.

HB626 bans carry at public colleges and universities, eliminating the CHP exception that had allowed permit holders on campus. This one will get people killed. A professor who commutes through three jurisdictions and walks across campus every morning is now disarmed for the bulk of her day. Every public university in Virginia just became a gun-free zone with no practical mechanism for self-defense.

HB969 directs the Secretary of Public Safety to establish a “Gun Violence Prevention Center” work group, stacked with anti-gun appointees, whose explicit job is to produce research and legislative recommendations by December 2026. They’re using a work group to build the political foundation for the next wave of bills, and the recommendations will be ready before the next session even starts.

I’ve watched Virginia move from a state where I felt comfortable visiting and carrying to something almost unrecognizable in the span of a few years. The Democrats got their legislative trifecta and they used it. They weren’t subtle about what they wanted. Governor Spanberger signed most of these bills on April 10, three days before the deadline, and called it protecting communities.

Law-abiding gun owners are now at legal risk for things they did legally. Permit holders from neighboring states lost reciprocity they relied on for years. And a state-funded agency is already drawing up the next round of restrictions before a single lawsuit from this batch has been decided.

The courts will sort some of this out. Bruen gives us better tools than we’ve had in decades. The DOJ has made clear it’s watching. But in the meantime, if you are a Virginia gun owner or someone who regularly travels into Virginia, you need to read every one of these 18 laws carefully. The one you don’t know about is the one that will get you.