Virginia Rifle Ban: Cops Carry What You Can’t

I’m Lance Rankin, a Texas FFL and gunsmith at Western Sport in Roanoke. Virginia just joined the list of states banning so-called assault weapons, and the details deserve a closer look than the headlines gave them. Fair warning up front: this is dated commentary on a law that was immediately challenged in court, so check the current status before treating any of it as settled.

What the law does

The bill, signed by Governor Abigail Spanberger, makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to manufacture, sell, buy, import, or transfer covered semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines in Virginia. Current owners get to keep what they have, but they can’t transfer those guns to anyone outside their immediate family. Signing it, the governor said firearms “designed to inflict maximum casualties do not belong on our streets” and framed the law as protecting families and supporting law enforcement.

The definition problem

Here’s where my gunsmith hat comes on. “Designed to inflict maximum casualties” describes no category that exists in engineering terms; taken literally it covers every firearm ever made, from a duck gun to a deer rifle. What the law actually bans is a features list, and critics have pointed out the definitions are broad enough to sweep in semi-automatic shotguns with pistol grips, AR-15s, and arguably even the Ruger 10/22, a .22 plinker that’s been teaching kids marksmanship since 1964. When your “weapons of war” ban plausibly catches a 10/22, the drafting is telling on itself.

The “assault weapon” label has always been a marketing term rather than a technical one. As far back as 1988, gun-control strategy documents noted that the public confuses semi-automatic rifles with fully automatic ones, and that the confusion was useful. Actual military rifles are select-fire, and those have been tightly restricted from civilians since 1986. An AR-15 shares a silhouette with an M4, not a fire-control group. Banning by appearance is exactly what it sounds like.

The contradiction in the title

The same rifles Virginia now deems too dangerous to sell to its citizens ride in the patrol cars of Virginia police officers. Pick one: if these are effective defensive tools, that’s precisely why civilians want them for defending their homes, and the FBI’s own data has long shown rifles of any kind are used in a small fraction of homicides. If instead they’re weapons of war unfit for the streets, why is the state issuing them to officers who work those streets? There’s no coherent answer, and that incoherence is why laws like this end up in court.

The lawsuits, as of this writing

Challenges landed almost immediately. The NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the Firearms Policy Coalition filed federal suits, while the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, the Virginia Shooting Sports Association, and Middletown Firearms, joined by local gun owners, filed at the state level. The core argument is the Supreme Court’s protection of arms in “common use,” and with tens of millions of AR-pattern rifles in American hands, common use is not a hard case to make. Expect years of litigation; check the dockets for where things stand now.

Meanwhile the states keep diverging. Missouri created a school ranger program for trained armed volunteers, West Virginia lowered permitless carry to 18, and Utah limited liability suits against the gun industry. Same Constitution, wildly different rights depending on your ZIP code. That’s the real story here.

Here in Texas, the rifles Virginia just banned remain perfectly legal, and I build them daily. If you’re getting started, read my beginner’s AR-15 guide and how to buy a gun in Texas, or brush up on Texas constitutional carry. Questions? [email protected] or 817-393-4000.