Virginia’s new Democrat majority and the Gov. Abigail Spanberger administration have already begun targeting the Commonwealth’s businesses and voters. And NSSF is fighting back.
Laws imposing retailer liability and banning the sale of commonly owned firearms won’t reduce crime. All they will do is erode constitutional rights, hurt Virginia businesses and undermine lawful commerce.
Lawfare Attack
Holding legally operating retailers accountable for the acts of criminals is bad practice and bad policy. It’s also counter to commonsense and federal law. Congress passed the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005 to explicitly create liability protections for law-abiding gun manufacturers and sellers in the face of coordinated “regulation through litigation” efforts aimed not at improving public safety but rather bankrupting a lawful industry.
Now, two decades later, this strategy has re-emerged in Virginia (following the lead of other antigun state legislatures) with new liability standards on federally licensed manufacturers and retailers. By declaring the lawful commerce of firearms a “public nuisance,” HB 21/SB 27 — now law — ensures that a retailer or manufacturer can be held liable for a misused firearm even though courts have long held that criminal acts generally break the chain of liability.
The legislation creates a standard that no maker of any lawful product could reasonably meet: the requirement that the manufacturer must predict the future actions of third parties including criminals. That is unfair and un-American.
Former President Ronald Reagan embraced this forgotten notion when in 1968 he said, “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”
Attack on Right to Purchase
Even more concerning is the all-out ban on many commonly owned firearms and standard-sized magazines, which is also now law in Virginia. This new law can’t be squared with either the U.S. Constitution nor Virginia’s constitution. HB217/SB749 makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to import, sell, manufacture, purchase or transfer common firearms, including modern sporting rifles or AR-15s. These are the most popular selling firearms in America, with over 32 million in circulation.
NSSF isn’t giving an inch to Virginia Gov. Spanberger’s gun grab. Less than a day after signing the law, NSSF funded a lawsuit challenging it in state court. And days later, NSSF funded a motion for a preliminary injunction to keep the state from enforcing the unconstitutional law while it is inevitably winding its way through the courts.
Virginians are reacting to the ban. Background checks for the sale of a firearm in the Commonwealth were 70 percent higher than they were just one year ago.
In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects firearms in common use for lawful purposes. This unequivocally extends to the AR-15 (the most popular rifle in America).
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, SCOTUS held that under the Second Amendment . . .
To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Virginia’s historical tradition of firearms once required citizens to equip themselves as basic infantrymen. The military’s standard infantry rifle is itself derived from the AR-15 platform, making the firearm the direct ancestor of America’s modern service firearm. The MSR, though, is a semiautomatic rifle that functions differently than the military’s service rifle. These particular firearms have been available for sale to the American public since the early 1960s.
With this in mind, Virginia’s ban fails on two counts. It targets a firearm commonly used for lawful purposes under Heller, and it lacks any basis in America’s historical tradition of firearm regulation under Bruen.
Shortsighted Legislators
Virginia’s 2026 legislative session will be remembered not for making the Commonwealth safer nor getting a single criminal off the streets, but for attacking businesses, infringing on rights and defying Supreme Court precedent.
The precedent set here should concern anyone involved in business across a range of industries. If a retailer can be held liable for a customer’s future criminal acts, no seller of any product is safe.
Virginia lawmakers would be better served by enforcing the laws already on the books and prosecuting those who break them rather than punishing the businesses and citizens who don’t. Holding criminals accountable is how you improve public safety. Holding law-abiding retailers liable for crimes they didn’t commit, banning the most popular rifle in America and putting a timer on a constitutional right is not.
Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.