By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
The Virginia House of Delegates has passed legislation to ban sales of certain so-called “assault weapons” including the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, with a registration requirement for all such currently-owned firearms.
The vote was 51-48 with several Democrats defecting to vote with their Republican colleagues.
The legislation, which now goes to the state Senate, also gives state government the authority to confiscate suppressors and so-called “high capacity” magazines.
According to WSET News—which said the legislation “regulates” firearms—Delegate Dave Larock declared, “And just like that, Virginia House Democrats vote to make millions of Virginians surrender their property or become criminals. “If the Senate goes along with this nonsense, the Governor will sign it, and then AG Herring will spend YOUR [money] to defend this unconstitutional overreach.”
Another tenet of the bill, the news agency said, “prohibits a person from carrying a shotgun with a magazine that will hold more than seven rounds of the longest ammunition for which it is chambered in a public place; under existing law, this prohibition applies only in certain localities.” Violation is a Class 6 felony if the bill becomes law.
House Bill 961 defines an “assault firearm” as a “semi-automatic center-fire rifle that expels single or multiple projectiles by action of an explosion of a combustible material with a fixed magazine capacity in excess of 12 rounds.”
Anti-gun Democrat Del. Mark Levine, who sponsored the legislation, insisted the legislation “is a compromise that takes into account folk’s concerns and is still a good bill that will help reduce mass murders in the commonwealth.”
The bill now goes to the Senate, where Democrats hold a 21-19 majority, made possible by last November’s poor voter turnout of only about 40 percent. In January, some 22,000 angry Virginians, reinforced by supportive gun owners from other states, converged on the Capitol in Richmond to oppose the gun control agenda championed by Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam and Assembly Democrats who had just achieved the majority for the first time in years. They wasted no time in going after guns.
WSET reported that anyone in possession of an unregistered “assault firearm,” “large capacity magazine,” silencer or “trigger activator” must “render them inoperable, surrender them to police, or get them out of the state,” under provisions of the legislation.
The bill allows owners to retain their firearms if they get a permit from the State Police.
