Abigail Spanberger signed SB 749 to reduce the number of AR-15s in Virginia, and the direct measurable result is that Virginians bought rifles at twice the…
The bottom line
Abigail Spanberger signed SB 749 to reduce the number of AR-15s in Virginia, and the direct measurable result is that Virginians bought rifles at twice the rate they did a year ago. Every one of those firearms is grandfathered and protected. The ban does not make Virginia safer; it makes the “in common use” case against itself stronger with every passing week.
This article is based on analysis from Bearing Freedom. Watch the original video. This is commentary, not legal advice.
What the numbers actually say
In May 2026, Virginia processed 74,959 NSSF-adjusted NICS background checks tied to gun sales. That is a 103% increase over May 2025, when the state recorded approximately 35,571. More than doubled, in a single month.
Virginia ranked fourth among all 50 states in overall background checks, behind Texas, Florida, and California. For long gun sales specifically, the state ranked second in the nation, trailing only Texas. Not California. Not Florida. Texas, a state whose entire political identity is built around firearms ownership, barely outpaced a state that just had its governor sign an AR-15 ban.
This was not a one-month anomaly. April 2026 was already running roughly 79% above the prior year. The surge built through spring, accelerating month over month as the July 1 effective date got closer. Gun stores across Virginia have been running low on inventory. Distributors have been rationing. The market responded to SB 749 exactly the way markets respond to announced scarcity: it pulled demand forward on a massive scale.
SB 749 and its companion HB 217, signed by Spanberger on May 14, 2026, ban the sale, manufacture, purchase, and transfer of so-called “assault firearms,” including the AR-15, and magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds. The law takes effect July 1. But it grandfathers firearms lawfully owned before that date. A Virginian who buys an AR-15 on June 30 owns it legally, permanently, with no registration requirement and no surrender obligation. That is the window every gun owner in the state is racing through right now.
The backfire is structural, not accidental
This is what happens every single time a legislature announces a ban with a future effective date. Connecticut’s 2013 “assault weapons” registration law produced a compliance rate estimated as low as 15%, with hundreds of thousands of rifles quietly retained without registration. California’s magazine ban created a gold rush during every court-ordered “freedom week.” Illinois passed its ban in January 2023, and the state saw months of elevated sales before the law’s enforcement provisions kicked in.
The pattern is not a bug in how gun-control laws get written. It is baked into any ban that announces itself in advance, includes a grandfather clause for prior ownership, and applies to a product that is legal to buy everywhere around you right now. All three conditions are present in SB 749. Spanberger and the Virginia General Assembly wrote the law knowing full well that a grandfather clause was politically necessary to avoid a taking challenge. In doing so, they built the buying frenzy into the statute itself.
The anti-gun movement calls these laws public safety measures. What they produce, by their own mechanics, is a short-term explosion in sales of the exact items they want restricted. The net result is more AR-15s and standard-capacity magazines locked in Virginia gun safes than existed before the bill passed, all of them permanently grandfathered and outside the law’s reach.
The “in common use” problem just got worse for the ban
The people celebrating SB 749 are not thinking about what it just did to the constitutional case against itself. Under Heller, the Second Amendment protects arms in “common use for lawful purposes.” The AR-15 is already the most popular rifle in America, with an estimated 20 to 30 million in civilian hands nationwide. Every rifle that cleared a Virginia NICS check in May adds to that number.
When this law faces a serious constitutional challenge, opposing counsel will cite those NSSF figures. They will point out that Virginia gun owners purchased rifles at a rate that made the state the second-largest long gun market in the country for the month, and argue that this is what “common use” looks like. The ban’s own effect, the buying surge it generated, goes into the legal record against it.
On June 2, 2025, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Snope v. Brown, the challenge to Maryland’s AR-15 ban. Thomas dissented, and Alito and Gorsuch would have granted cert. Kavanaugh wrote a statement saying the Court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.” That was a year ago. The question is coming. When it does, the common-use argument will be supported by years of elevated sales data from states that banned the rifle and in the process accelerated how many people own one.
The enforcement problem Spanberger didn’t anticipate
There is also the matter of who is supposed to actually enforce this thing. As of early June, at least 12 Commonwealth’s Attorneys and a growing number of sheriffs have publicly said they will not enforce SB 749. Pulaski County Commonwealth’s Attorney Justin Griffith put it directly: “I am not going to take law-abiding citizens as of June 30, 2026 and criminalize that same behavior on July 1, 2026 solely on the basis of this new law.” Prosecutors in Spotsylvania, Warren, Goochland, Powhatan, Scott, and Smyth counties have said the same.
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones has insisted prosecutors must enforce the law. But there is no realistic mechanism to compel a locally elected Commonwealth’s Attorney to charge a case he has publicly refused to bring. Prosecutorial discretion is a foundational principle in American criminal law, and the gun control movement’s only real answer to it is to elect different prosecutors, which is a multi-year project in predominantly rural counties that voted heavily against Spanberger.
The population centers that support this law do not overlap with the communities where it will be most resented. That gap has existed since the first day of the 2026 session. It is wider now.
What gun owners should take from this
I am not going to pretend the buying surge solves anything by itself. The law is still on the books. Dealers cannot sell covered firearms in Virginia after June 30. Young Virginians who turn 18 after July 1 will not be able to legally purchase an AR-15 in their home state. That matters.
The scale of this response tells you something real. Gun owners in Virginia did not resign themselves to the ban. They bought rifles in numbers that made the state the second-largest long gun market in the country for a single month. The same people standing in line at dealers in May are also watching the lawsuits, watching the prosecutors refuse to charge, and watching Kavanaugh’s statement that the AR-15 question is coming to the Court. They are not confused about what they are doing.
Spanberger signed SB 749 to shrink the number of modern sporting rifles in civilian hands. The documented result is that more of them exist in Virginia today than at any point before she signed it. The grandfathered owners have a permanently protected property interest the law cannot touch. And every rifle sold in this window strengthens the common-use argument that will eventually kill the ban.
I genuinely cannot think of a more effective way to arm a state than announcing you are about to ban a firearm and giving people three months’ notice.
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