I run a gun shop in Texas, not Virginia, so you might wonder why I’m writing about the Virginia AG race. Two reasons. State attorneys general shape gun policy far beyond their own borders, and this particular race says something about how the big national gun control groups operate. I’m Lance Rankin, owner of Western Sport in Roanoke, Texas, and this is commentary, so take it as one FFL’s opinion.
What happened in the Virginia AG race
Leaked text messages from one of the candidates surfaced containing violent language aimed at political opponents and their families. I’m not going to reprint it here. It was ugly enough that people across party lines said so, and it’s the kind of thing that would end most careers in most years.
The part that actually interests me
Here’s what caught my attention: the major gun control organizations that had endorsed this candidate, Brady, Everytown, Moms Demand Action, and Giffords, kept their endorsements after the messages came out.
Think about that for a second. These are groups whose entire public case is that they stand against violence. They lecture gun owners like me and my customers about rhetoric, about responsibility, about the culture around firearms. Then a candidate they’ve backed gets caught fantasizing in writing about violence against a political rival’s family, and the response is silence and a still-active endorsement.
I don’t think that makes everyone in those organizations a hypocrite. I do think it tells you the endorsements were never really about violence or safety in the first place. They’re about policy outcomes, and in the Virginia AG race the policy outcome they want is an attorney general who’ll be aggressive on gun restrictions. Everything else is negotiable. Gun owners have suspected that for years; it’s just rare to see it demonstrated this cleanly.
If you vote in Virginia
Don’t outsource your judgment to any national group’s endorsement, mine included if I ever gave one. Read the candidates’ own words, look at their actual records on constitutional rights, and weigh character like it matters, because in an office with prosecutorial power, it matters more than most. As of this writing, early voting is underway in Virginia, so the window to act on any of this is now. And since races and facts move fast, check current reporting before you rely on my summary.
The takeaway for the rest of us
Attorney general races are where a lot of gun policy actually gets fought: which laws get defended, which get challenged, which enforcement priorities get set. They draw a fraction of the attention a governor’s race gets. If you care about the Second Amendment, wherever you live, put AG races on your list of things to follow. The Virginia AG race is just the loudest current example.
That’s my two cents from behind the counter. If you need anything on the gear side rather than the politics side, the store is always open, and I’m reachable at [email protected] or 817-393-4000.
Lance Rankin is the owner and Chief Gunsmith of Western Sport, a family-run Type 07 FFL and Class 3/SOT dealer in Roanoke, Texas, serving shooters since 2007. Born and raised in Texas with over 50 years of experience handling firearms, Lance purchased Western Sport in 2017 and turned his lifelong passion into his profession. He specializes in AR-15 and AR-10 platform rifles, manufactures Western Sport’s own AR-15 line under the Rankin Industries brand, and runs the shop’s in-house Cerakote coating operation. When he’s not behind the counter or the workbench, you’ll find him on his ranch deep into the night, hunting coyotes with an AR-15 and thermal optics. Lance holds an MBA and personally shoots and tests the products Western Sport sells.
