Nine of Virginia's 18 gun bills are now signed into law. Four have been sent back to the House with amendments that make them worse. Five remain in limbo, and…
The bottom line
Nine of Virginia’s 18 gun bills are now signed into law. Four have been sent back to the House with amendments that make them worse. Five remain in limbo, and those five include the assault weapons ban, the semi-automatic carry ban, and a mandatory gun buyback program. I’ve been covering this for going on eight hours straight. Here is everything I know as of right now.
This article is based on analysis from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.
The nine that are now law
I’m going to go through each signed bill. These are not pending. These are law in the Commonwealth of Virginia. They have varying effective dates, but the governor’s signature means they are on the books.
HB21 is the one that has not gotten nearly enough attention. I’ve been running stopspamburger.com and put this one at the top of my concern list months ago. The official framing is that it opens gun manufacturers and dealers to civil liability for negligence. What it actually is is a PLCAA workaround, a mechanism specifically designed to do an end-run around the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which has since 2005 shielded the firearm industry from most civil suits. The PLCAA exists because the gun control movement in the 1990s tried to use civil litigation to bankrupt gun manufacturers out of existence. Congress shut that down.
HB21 tries to reopen that door at the state level. It creates a state-law standard of “reasonable conduct” for anyone in the gun supply chain: manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and anyone “engaged in the marketing of covered products.” That last clause is deliberately vague. If someone steals a firearm from me and uses it to commit a crime, I can be sued for failing to prevent the theft. If I sell a gun to someone who later has it illegally modified, I can potentially be sued for not having prevented that modification. The DOJ under Harmeet Dhillon specifically called this law out by name when issuing its warning to Virginia, citing its conflict with federal statutory intent. This bill is going to be litigated.
HB40 is the ghost gun ban with no grandfather clause. If you own an unserialized firearm right now, you are going to be a felon when this takes effect, unless you do something about it. The effective dates are staggered: manufacturing bans first, then possession. First possession offense is a Class 1 misdemeanor, up to 12 months and a $25,000 fine. Second offense is a Class 4 felony, minimum two years, maximum ten, fine up to $100,000. That is what you face for owning something that is currently legal to own in Virginia today. There is no path to self-serialize. Taking it to an FFL who offers serialization services is an option in theory. In practice, most FFLs don’t do this. You are largely stuck.
HB19 expands the definition of who constitutes an “intimate partner” for purposes of the firearms prohibition that attaches to domestic violence convictions. The new definition includes anyone who within the previous 12 months was in a romantic, dating, or sexual relationship, determined by a four-factor test: length of relationship, nature of the relationship, frequency of interaction, and type of interaction. A judge will quiz you about the details of your relationship to determine whether you had a qualifying one. If you did and you have a domestic violence conviction or restraining order, your firearms rights are affected. A cohabitant who is not a romantic partner is also covered. This one is not generating the press attention of the flashier bills, but it affects real people in real situations.
HB93 deals with the mechanics of firearm surrender after a protective order. It modifies the process by which you have to give up your guns when a protective order is issued against you. The specifics are procedural, but the direction is always the same: faster surrender, more automatic, less due process.
HB91 I covered in detail earlier tonight but it deserves full treatment here. Virginia’s red flag law previously allowed only two categories of people to petition for an Extreme Risk Protection Order: prosecutors and law enforcement officers. HB91 expands that to 18 categories. The list includes immediate family members, household members, intimate partners, cohabitants, and then a list of professionals: doctors of medicine, doctors of osteopathy, licensed clinical social workers, licensed professional counselors, licensed marriage and family therapists, licensed psychologists, and the “designee of a local community services board.” An ex-girlfriend qualifies. Your roommate after a falling-out qualifies. A social worker you met once during a welfare check qualifies. Under an ERPO, your guns are taken before you have been convicted of anything. The standard is preponderance of the evidence in an ex parte hearing, meaning the court hears only one side before issuing the order. The Virginia Law Review published analysis noting that ERPOs “raise significant procedural due process concerns” precisely because of this one-sided initial hearing structure. HB91 multiplied the universe of people who can trigger that process by nine. This is a direct assault on due process.
HB626 bans firearms on all public university and college campuses statewide. Before this bill, universities made their own decisions. Some permitted carry, some did not. That discretion is gone. Every campus is now a gun-free zone by state law. The penalty is a Class 1 misdemeanor. Twelve months in jail and a $2,500 fine is the maximum. There is no carve-out for concealed handgun permit holders. If you are a licensed carrier and you are on any public campus property in Virginia for any reason, you are committing a crime. That applies to a professor who carries, a parent visiting a child in a dorm, a contractor doing work on campus facilities.
HB110 is the $500 civil penalty for leaving a firearm visible in a parked vehicle. Don’t leave your gun visible in a car. But the principle matters. You are the victim in a gun theft situation. Virginia’s criminal system has not been punishing violent criminals at any meaningful rate, and this session’s legislation is not spending any energy on that. But for the gun owner whose property gets stolen because they made a bad decision, the state has a $500 penalty ready to go.
HB115 guts concealed carry reciprocity. Virginia previously had automatic reciprocity agreements with a large number of states. Under this law, the attorney general now has unilateral authority to determine which states have “substantially similar” standards to Virginia’s. That phrase has no statutory definition. The current Virginia attorney general, Jason Miyares, is a Republican and may not aggressively use this authority. But the office will not always be held by a Republican, and this law will still be on the books when it isn’t. I live in North Carolina. When I cross the border into Virginia, my North Carolina CHP may no longer be recognized if the AG decides North Carolina’s standards don’t meet the “substantially similar” threshold. That is a real consequence for real gun owners today.
HB916 is the CHP training overhaul. The original bill text literally named the NRA and the USCCA and barred them from offering qualifying courses. That language was removed before passage, presumably because explicitly targeting named organizations by statute creates obvious First Amendment problems alongside the Second Amendment ones. But the intent was never hidden. This is a deliberate attempt to make Virginia’s CHP process more cumbersome and to cut two major Second Amendment organizations out of the pipeline.
The four sent back to the House
SB348, mandatory firearm storage, has been returned with amendments. The change is not about weakening the bill. My best read based on the pattern of her other amendments is that she upgraded the penalty. The original bill was a $250 fine. I predicted she would move it to a Class 2 misdemeanor, six months in jail, and a $1,000 fine. I’ll confirm when the LIS site catches up. The core requirement remains: if a minor or prohibited person is present in your home, your gun must be in a government-approved locked container. Your nightstand is not compliant. Your locked bedroom is not compliant. When seconds count.
HB99, the election site gun-free zone bill, is back with the House. I still do not have the exact text of what she changed. What I know is the original bill creates 100-foot perimeters around ballot drop-off boxes, election offices, and a broad array of other election sites. Ballot drop boxes can be placed on any street corner with no requirement that adjacent residents or businesses receive notice. You could walk your dog past a drop box you did not know existed and find yourself within 100 feet of it while carrying. Twelve months maximum, no intent requirement. Whatever she changed, the perimeter is still there.
HB229, the mental health hospital weapons ban, is back with amendments I have gone through in detail. The summary: she removed the armed security exemption, the hospital employee authorization, and the involuntary detention exemption. The last of those is the most indefensible. If you are transported to a mental health facility against your will, you can now be charged with a crime for having been carrying a firearm lawfully at the time of transport. She removed the protection for people who had no agency in the situation.
One more bill, the hate crime firearms ban, has also been returned. If you commit a hate crime of any kind, misdemeanor or felony, you are permanently prohibited from owning a firearm. The governor’s amendment reduced it to a three-year prohibition from the date of conviction rather than a lifetime ban. I genuinely do not understand this one from her perspective. If she is the anti-gun governor her record suggests, why would she reduce the penalty? My best guess is she is trying to make the bill more legally defensible, since a lifetime firearms ban for a misdemeanor hate crime would face serious constitutional challenges under Bruen’s proportionality implications.
The five still in limbo
SB749 is the assault weapons ban. This bans the sale, manufacture, transfer, and import of semi-automatic firearms with certain features. The bill has gotten broader in successive versions. Semi-automatic centerfire pistols with magazines over 15 rounds are now captured regardless of other features. Shotguns with detachable magazines are in. The feature list for rifles is already sweeping: telescoping stocks, pistol grips, thumbhole stocks, threaded barrels, barrel shrouds, and more. Under the two-feature test in the bill’s original form, an enormous percentage of commonly owned rifles are covered. The DOJ has explicitly warned Virginia it will sue if this is signed. Harmeet Dhillon’s letter cited NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022) by name, noting that semi-automatic rifles in common use cannot be categorically banned consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation. Whether that threat holds and whether federal courts will act quickly enough to provide injunctive relief is a separate question.
HB1524 is the semi-automatic carry ban on public property. This bans the carrying and transporting of covered semi-automatic firearms on public roads, parks, and sidewalks. It applies to essentially the entire public geography of Virginia. There is no CHP carve-out. The statewide scope is what makes this distinct from the prior law, which restricted carry only in 13 specific localities. This bill is aggressive enough that there was genuine speculation tonight she might veto it. That speculation appears to have been wrong.
HB1525 bans handgun and certain firearm purchases by adults under 21. I’m almost certain this gets signed. There is no federal constitutional bar to age-based purchase restrictions at this point: Hirschfeld v. ATF (4th Cir. 2021) upheld federal under-21 handgun purchase restrictions, though the post-Bruen landscape has complicated that precedent. What this bill does is create an entirely new permit-to-purchase system for Virginians under 21 who want to acquire those firearms.
HB969 creates a permanent taxpayer-funded office devoted to anti-gun advocacy dressed up as “gun violence prevention.” State money goes directly to organizations that lobby for the same gun control agenda that produced all of these bills. It is a self-sustaining machine: the anti-gun lobby lobbies for gun control, the state creates an office to fund more anti-gun lobbying, and the cycle continues on your tax dollars. That is naked corruption and I say it without apology.
The mandatory gun buyback bill mandates that every locality in Virginia establish a voluntary buyback program by 2028. The fiscal impact of this is substantial enough that it may affect the timeline, but I doubt it stops it.
The larger picture
This has been the most consequential 24 hours for Virginia Second Amendment law in at least a decade, probably longer. Nine bills signed into law. Four more sent back with amendments designed to make them more restrictive, not less. Five major bills still in the pipeline, including the ones that will generate federal litigation.
I’ve been awake and covering this for the better part of a day. The Virginia Citizens Defense League, the NRA-ILA, and Gun Owners of America all have their work cut out for them. Several of these laws are going to be challenged in court. HB40 has real Bruen problems. HB21 has PLCAA preemption problems. SB749 has the most obvious constitutional vulnerability, which is probably why the DOJ chose it for its explicit threat. HB99’s strict liability structure and the breadth of the gun-free zone it creates will generate challenges.
But court challenges take time. They take money. They take favorable judges and a legal landscape that can shift. In the meantime, Virginia gun owners are living under laws that turn lawful behavior into criminal behavior, that strip due process from firearm rights, and that were designed from the beginning not to make anyone safer, but to make gun ownership in Virginia as legally precarious and practically difficult as possible. That is the record. That is what tonight produced.
This article is based on analysis from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.
Get the Weekly Briefing
New analysis delivered every week. Court decisions, case updates, and expert commentary.