“I’d say we’re selling eight to ten times as many firearms each day as we were prior to this [legislative] session starting,” Mitchell Tyler, Stateside Tactical co-owner—located in Roanoke, Va.—told WDBJ television. “That is going to change, though, after July 1st, because many of the most popular firearms that are commonly in use in Virginia are becoming unavailable.”
“Right now, our new governor is the best gun salesman that we have,” Lee Starr, an employee at Windy Valley Forge & Armory in Marion, Va., told News 5 TV. “I mean every time we get something new it flies off the shelf. We can’t keep guns in stock, we can’t keep ammo in stock because everybody’s worried about what’s going to happen July 1st if everything comes to fruition.”
July 1 is when SB749/HB217 would become effective if Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) signs it into law. NRA-IlA summarizes the legislation as a ban of “…certain semi-automatic firearms, including many semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns, prohibits the sale of magazines exceeding 15 rounds, and prohibits possession by legal adults under the age of 21. This bill is an attempt to redefine and ban firearms that are in common use by law-abiding citizens, and prohibit the future sale and transfer of virtually all modern firearms.”
It is only one of several anti-Second Amendment measures currently on the governor’s desk. Others include additional restrictions for transporting a firearm in a vehicle, another that jeopardizes the state’s reciprocity agreements and others. Full details are found on the NRA-ILA webpage.
In the meantime, residents are eager to exercise their constitutional rights. “We have more customers, we have parking issues because of it, people come by and say that they had to pass four times before they could find a parking place,” L&M Firearms owner Mark Moorefield told a reporter from ABC13 News. Demand isn’t limited to standard AR-15 chamberings in his Pittsborough County store, either. “People want large caliber, whereas a lot of people already have the 556s and they’re wanting to get a bigger cartridge like the 308s, so we've been seeing a big increase on the 308s,” he added.
The increase is statewide, too. “Virginia’s background checks were more than 23,000 higher in February than they were a year ago,” Mark Oliva, National Shooting Sport Foundation spokesman said in a statement. “That’s an increase of more than 55 percent, which followed a nearly 26 percent increase last month in the face of a looming ban on the most popular centerfire rifle in America—the Modern Sporting Rifle.”
While the ban itself is bad news, NRA is poised to file litigation to challenge it as soon as it becomes law.
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