guns

Listen to “Virginia Dems Ready Major Gun Control Effort” on Spreaker.

On Tuesday, Democrats won the majority in both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly.  Come January, gun control will be at the top of the agenda for Gov. Ralph Northam and his allies in the legislature.

This past summer, Northam called a special session to address gun legislation.  The Republican majority promptly adjourned the session.  Now with control of both the State Senate and the House of Delegates, Northam is making his agenda known.

According to the Washington Post, Northam held a cabinet meeting Wednesday and publicly laid out his gun control agenda.  He “mentioned universal background checks, banning the sale of [semi-automatic firearms] and high-capacity magazines, restoring the law that limits purchases to one gun a month, and a red flag law that would empower a court to temporarily remove a gun from a person deemed to be a risk to himself or others.”

Northam also admitted he was seriously examining how to confiscate firearms already legally owned by Virginians but would be banned under his proposed legislation.

But what exactly does Northam mean by an “assault weapon.”  Gun Owners of America Legislative Counsel Mike Hammond says Northam appears to have a broad swath of weapons in mind for his ban.

“As far as I can tell, it’s basically all semi-automatics that have one or no features that make them look like actual automatic firearms. The term assault weapon is sort of a fraudulent term invented by the left in order to make regular rifles and handguns more dangerous or more exceptional than they in fact are,” said Hammond.

And what does Hammond think about Northam’s confiscation plans?

“Oh, I hope he goes that route because, as (former Democratic presidential candidate) Beto O’Rourke found out, when you talk about raiding someone’s house in the middle of the night through these red flag gun confiscation laws and seizing their semi-automatic rifles, then at that point I think firearms owners in Virginia will finally wake up and there will be a red wave during the next gubernatorial election,” said Hammond.

Listen to the full podcast as Hammond explains why any component of Northam’s agenda would be an unacceptable infringement on the Second Amendment and why he thinks it’s possible to defeat the gun control agenda in the Virginia legislature even with Democrats in charge.