What’s going on in Virginia is worth watching, and not just for Second Amendment enthusiasts. It’s a delicious “chickens coming home to roost” moment for Democrats and the Left.
With implications that could change the very nature not just of American federalism, but of the relationship between state and local government. And as usual, the potential breaking point comes from a Democrat abuse of power.
In this case, the draconian gun-control laws passed by the radical Democrat state legislature in Virginia and signed by first-year governor Abigail Spanberger, a real-life Hunger Games villain who just seems like she’s bought a business-class ticket on the political fail-train. (RELATED: Spanberger’s Spectacular Gerrymandering Faceplant)
After Democrats gained full control of the state government, with Spanberger in the governor’s mansion and the General Assembly going hard to the left following the 2025 elections, they advanced an “ambitious” package of gun control measures. One of the most prominent is HB 217 / SB 749, the assault firearms and large-capacity magazine ban. (RELATED: Exclusive: Virginia Republicans Slam Spanberger’s Gun Ban, Pledge to Repeal It)
That bill banned the importation, sale, manufacture, purchase, or transfer of certain semi-automatic “assault firearms” — once again, this is poorly defined, but essentially we’re talking about centerfire rifles and some pistols which can accept magazines over a certain capacity. (RELATED: Gunfight at Governor Abigail’s Corral)
Violating the new law is generally a Class 1 misdemeanor. There is a grandfather clause — firearms and magazines lawfully possessed before July 1, 2026, can be kept by the owner… generally. Limited transfers are allowed in specific cases, such as to a licensed dealer/FLL, out-of-state buyers, inheritance, or gifts to immediate family. But beginning on July 1, new sales or transfers inside Virginia after that date are prohibited. Team Spanberger is effectively freezing the in-state market for new restricted items and creating massive opportunities for gun sellers in neighboring states.
This is going to become a disaster, of course, and everybody knows it.
And we also know how.
In Louisa County, which is northwest of Richmond, the local sheriff is a Republican named Donald Lowe. And in that rural county, pop. 38,000, Spanberger’s gun-grabbing is not going to fly. A week ago, Lowe said so. His statement…
As Sheriff of Louisa County and a Constitutional Officer sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia, I want to address concerns regarding proposed and newly enacted legislation related to so-called “assault weapons.”
I have always been a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and the rights it guarantees to law-abiding citizens. Our Founding Fathers considered these rights so essential that they placed them second only to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. The right to keep and bear arms remains a fundamental constitutional liberty that must be protected.
I will not support efforts that turn otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals, subjecting them to potentially lifelong consequences for exercising what they believe to be their constitutional rights. Any law that directly conflicts with the Constitution deserves careful scrutiny and judicial review before enforcement actions are taken against responsible citizens.
At this time, I believe there remains significant confusion surrounding the definition of an “assault weapon.” I am not convinced there is a clear, consistent, and universally understood definition of what constitutes an assault weapon under current discussions and proposals. This lack of clarity creates uncertainty for citizens, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and the courts alike.
Ultimately, a firearm is an inanimate object. A weapon used by a criminal during the commission of a violent crime may be labeled an “assault weapon.” Yet the very same firearm used by an innocent citizen to defend themselves, their family, or their property could just as accurately be described as a defensive weapon. The determining factor is not the firearm itself — it is who pulled the trigger and why.
My position is straightforward: the focus should remain on violent criminals and criminal behavior, not on restricting the constitutional rights of responsible citizens.
I also believe there should be a final and definitive determination by the courts, including the United States Supreme Court if necessary, regarding the constitutionality and enforceability of any such legislation. Citizens deserve clarity, and law enforcement officers deserve clear legal guidance.
As a Constitutional Officer, my oath is not to a political party, a legislative body, or a particular policy position. My oath is to the Constitution. Any law that is ultimately determined to be in direct contradiction to the Constitution cannot stand and should not be considered enforceable.
The Louisa County Sheriff’s Office will continue to protect the rights of our citizens while remaining committed to public safety, the rule of law, and the principles upon which this nation was founded.
In other words, we’ll see your “sanctuary city” stuff on illegal immigrants and transgender kids, and we’ll raise you the Second Amendment.
This isn’t just Lowe’s show. There are more than a dozen counties so far in Virginia whose sheriffs and/or commonwealth’s attorneys (that’s a Virginia version of a D.A.) have come out publicly saying they’re simply not going to enforce this law because they say it’s unconstitutional. (RELATED: Due Process Before Disarmament)
Which is what Democrats in blue cities and counties have been doing for years with respect to other issues. It’s also a reprise of the last time Democrats tried gun-grabbing in Virginia. That was back in 2019-20, and some 90 of Virginia’s 95 counties passed a resolution declaring themselves “2A sanctuaries.” Those resolutions are back with a vengeance this summer.
I could talk about the delicious irony of this, and I could say it’s what Abigail Spanberger and the rest of the stupid communists now running Virginia richly deserve. And I could also say that, given his office’s performance in attempting to defend Virginia’s sloppily-passed congressional gerrymander earlier this year, that state’s murderous Attorney General Jay Jones is unlikely to be very effective in warding off the inevitable constitutional challenge the new gun control law will bring on.
After all, if you want to hide something from Jay Jones, you should put it in a law book. He’ll never look for it there.
But I’ve got a little different angle that I’ll take on this. Because, as entertaining as it is, and it is that, and I’m rooting for the sheriffs and commonwealth’s attorneys doing the right thing and resisting these unconstitutional abuses of individual rights, this scenario is definitely troubling.
Why?
Well, consider that the relationship between a local government and a state is not the same as that between a state and the federal government. In our constitutional system, the state — not the federal government — is sovereign. That matters, because while states have ceded their authority on many matters both to Congress and the federal bureaucracy, and that’s an area of the law which is likely to begin developing rapidly in the wake of Chevron deference going away, for example, fundamentally, we have not set states up as departments of the federal government.
By contrast, a local government is, in fact, a department of a state government.
Most of the manifestations of this reality come within the realm of a blue city defying a red state. What’s happening in Virginia is the flip side.
And from a structure-of-government standpoint, neither is good. It isn’t good when blue cities defy state law to embrace hug-a-thug police and judicial policies, for example, and it also isn’t good when red counties declare themselves immune from the bad policies of blue politicians at the state capitol. That isn’t how our system of federalism and power distribution works.
But on the other hand, when the mentally ill seize control of the state capitol, I’m not going to tell the people that they have to live with the abuses the lunatics impose on them. Not when there are sane local officials who are willing to put themselves on the line to defend the folks.
So where does that leave us?
I see two paths available.
One is that the Abigail Spanbergers of the world learn to tone it down and stop flying their political freak flags in the faces of ordinary Americans. One of the positive features of the New Deal/Great Society political era, which ended with Donald Trump’s second electoral victory in 2024, was that there was at least a firm national consensus around what could be done politically in this country. Certainly, Democrats would fantasize about gun bans and so forth, but it was rare to see them do more than nibble at the edges.
That consensus is broken. The Democrats broke it. Either they can come back to the table and agree on a set of rules they’ll have to abide by, which reduces the effect of politics in our society to the point where we don’t have elected officials demanding the confiscation of Elon Musk’s wealth simply because he now has a whole lot of it, for example, or we get the second path. (RELATED: The Left’s Trillion-Dollar Nightmare)
And the second path is that Virginia can’t really exist as it does for much longer. Ditto for Washington, or Oregon, or Colorado, or Illinois, or a whole lot of other states. All of those blue states are blue because the big blue city in them contains enough population to outweigh the sea of red that surrounds that city. (RELATED: Gerrymandering and the Tyranny of Big Cities)
And as the Democrats become more and more mentally ill (that’s not my assessment of their politics, or at least not wholly so — it’s the conclusion from a good deal of recently-released scholarship), and they congregate in those open-air concrete jungle asylums where bad policy and bad culture twist together in a static dystopian blob, you’re simply not going to have the kind of political cohesion which allows for the governing system we’re used to.
Those cities along the Potomac in Northern Virginia might have to go back into the District of Columbia. Or everything from the Shenandoah west might have to join West Virginia. We might have to split cities off from states and/or rearrange our borders. We might end up with city-states, at least for a while, in a sort of American Dark Age where the great cities are left to wither and die as the populace retreats into the country. There are people who will tell you that the Dark Ages in Europe were actually not as dark as they’re made out to be; the power vacuum caused by the fall of Rome was actually a boon for human freedom.
This isn’t what I advocate, obviously. I’d much prefer to have the America I grew up in.
But that isn’t possible if Abigail Spanberger and Jay Jones hold political power. A Cuba is possible, or perhaps a Spain, but not an America.
And short of a civil war like the one unfolding in fits and starts in the UK — you may have heard that they arrested Tommy Robinson again — it may be that a fractured and redefined American federalism is the only way we can hold the republic together. (RELATED: On Belfast)
Because the 2A sanctuary movement, while laudatory in its constitutional outlook, is best understood as a red alert that the Left is breaking American governance — and doing so intentionally.
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