Spanberger's gun ban is going to backfire spectacularly

The bottom line

Abigail Spanberger signed HB 217 / SB 749 into law on May 14, 2026, and Virginia gun stores are reporting sales increases of 65 to 85 percent compared to this time last year. The law is almost certainly unconstitutional under Bruen, five separate lawsuits have been filed, and I think the legal challenges win. The panic-buying happening right now is only round one.

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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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What Spanberger actually signed

On May 14, 2026, Governor Spanberger signed companion bills HB 217 and SB 749, which take effect July 1. The law bans the import, sale, transfer, purchase, or manufacture of any firearm Virginia defines as an “assault firearm.” That definition sweeps in semi-automatic centerfire rifles with a detachable magazine and one listed feature, semi-automatic centerfire pistols with a detachable magazine and two listed features, and semi-automatic shotguns with one listed feature. It also bans magazines capable of accepting more than 15 rounds.

The grandfathering here is paper-thin. You can keep what you already own. You cannot sell it, transfer it, or buy another one. The state did not require a registration or a buyback. It simply froze the market as of July 1 and declared that whatever you have is yours until it isn’t.

The law as enrolled also catches something a lot of people have not focused on: shotguns with detachable magazines. Not AR-15s. Shotguns. Semi-automatic shotguns are among the most commonly owned firearms in the country. Deer guns, home defense guns, turkey hunting guns. There is no honest argument under the Heller framework that they are “dangerous and unusual.” They are in common use for lawful purposes across the country. The state of Virginia just banned their transfer anyway.

Spanberger framed this in her signing statement with the familiar line about growing up around guns and carrying a firearm every day as a federal agent. That framing is now a standard rhetorical move from Democratic gun-control politicians. It does not make the bill constitutional. It just makes it easier to sell to suburban Virginia voters who might otherwise push back.

Gun stores are seeing numbers they have never seen

ABC 8 News in Richmond ran a segment a few weeks ago interviewing Mark Tausch, president of Town Gun Shop. His store has seen assault-weapon sales up as high as 85 percent compared to earlier in the year. He said customers have come in to buy AR-platform rifles who have never bought one before, people who wanted to own one legally and understood June 30 was the last day they could. Virginia background check data backs this up: May 2026 background checks in Virginia exceeded 75,000, more than double the May 2025 figure. April 2026 was up 79 percent year over year.

Tausch was also candid about what comes next for stores more heavily focused on tactical firearms. He said it is going to hit them hard. An AR and a standard-capacity magazine is a routine, high-margin sale, and on July 1 that product category goes dark entirely for new commercial transactions.

There is a claim floating around that this law effectively becomes a full gun ban for Virginians because it will put FFLs out of business. I understand why people are worried about that. The history of the anti-gun movement using regulatory pressure on dealers to achieve what legislation cannot is real. Clinton issued a memorandum on August 11, 1993, literally directing the Secretary of the Treasury to take “whatever steps are necessary” to reduce the number of gun dealers. The Brady Act then raised the FFL licensing fee from $10 per year to $200 for a three-year term, added fingerprint and photo requirements, and required compliance with state and local zoning law. The number of licensed dealers dropped roughly 80 percent between 1994 and 2007.

That history is worth knowing. But I do not think the FFL-collapse scenario plays out here, and here is why.

Why this plays out differently than 1994

The Clinton-era consolidation happened over a decade, with no meaningful prospect of judicial relief. Courts in the 1990s treated the Second Amendment as a collective right that government could restrict nearly without limit. Heller ended that in 2008. McDonald incorporated it against the states in 2010. Bruen in 2022 blew up the interest-balancing tests courts had been using to rubber-stamp gun laws ever since.

Bruen changed the test entirely. The government now has to affirmatively demonstrate that a modern gun regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. You cannot point to a public interest in safety. You cannot invoke statistics about gun deaths. You have to produce historical analogues from the founding era or the ratification period. Virginia is going to have a very hard time producing a founding-era ban on semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines, for the obvious reason that no such thing existed.

Five lawsuits have been filed against HB 217 / SB 749 as of June 2026. The NRA announced twin state and federal challenges the same night the bill was signed. The Firearms Policy Coalition, Gun Owners of America, and the Virginia Citizens Defense League are parties to additional suits. The U.S. Department of Justice publicly warned Virginia in mid-April 2026 that it considered the bill constitutionally suspect. Two cases, Crump v. Katz and Santolla v. Katz, have hearings scheduled this week. In one of the related cases a judge denied the TRO but acknowledged on the record that the plaintiffs were suffering irreparable harm. That matters. Irreparable harm is one of the core factors for injunctive relief. A judge who admits it in writing while denying emergency relief is almost telling the plaintiffs to sharpen their motion for a preliminary injunction.

The Virginia Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision in Scott v. McDougle earlier this year, striking down the redistricting referendum on constitutional grounds, tells you something about where that court is. When there is a genuine constitutional question in front of it, the current SCOVA majority is willing to call the ball.

My expectation is that SB 749 gets enjoined. I would be genuinely surprised if we are sitting here a year from now and this law is still in full effect. The constitutional problems are too obvious, the Bruen framework is too demanding, and the 2A legal apparatus in 2026 is nothing like what it was in 1994.

The real effect of what Spanberger has done

Here is the dynamic I think people are missing. The panic buying Virginia gun owners are doing right now is going to create a second wave of sales once the law gets enjoined or overturned. People who bought one AR in May because they thought it might be their last chance are going to buy two more when they realize the restriction is gone. People who missed the window and did not buy one before July 1 are going to rush in the moment the injunction drops. Gun stores that hold on through a brief dip are going to see another surge.

That is the opposite of what happened under Clinton. Clinton’s decade of regulatory pressure had no correction moment. The number of dealers declined and stayed low because there was no court willing to push back. Here there is. When the ruling comes, the market bounces back hard.

Spanberger may have done more to arm Virginia gun owners than any pro-2A politician in recent memory. That is not a compliment. She miscalculated badly.

She has also handed Virginia’s 2A litigation machine one of the strongest test cases it has ever had. If the courts strike down HB 217 / SB 749 under Bruen, and I think they will, that ruling does not stay in Virginia. Maryland, Illinois, California all have bans premised on the same claim: that semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines can be categorically excluded from Second Amendment protection. Every court that rejects that theory makes the next state’s ban harder to defend.

Spanberger ran as a moderate in a competitive congressional district for years, positioning herself carefully. Then she became governor, read the political winds after the 2025 legislative session flipped the General Assembly, and pushed the most aggressive gun-control package in Virginia’s history. She picked a fight with the federal courts and a legal movement that has spent fifteen years building exactly the case law needed to beat her.

I think she loses. I think the FFLs come out fine. And I think Virginia gun owners end up better armed after this whole mess than they were before it.