Despite Virginia’s Ralph Northam having campaigned on gun control, it seems his agenda will have to wait a bit. After all, a key part of it was killed in Virginia’s Republican-controlled Senate, thus derailing what I’m sure was Northam’s plans for gun control to take center stage as he rolls into his governorship.

In particular, it was a bill for universal background checks that died a horrible and fiery death, much to my amusement.

Gov. Ralph Northam made a pitch for gun control at a Capitol Square rally Monday afternoon, but much of his firearm agenda had died Monday morning in a Republican-controlled Senate committee.

A Democratic bill to require universal background checks for gun purchases — a key component of Northam’s gun agenda — was defeated in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee.

Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Brian Moran, who held the post under former Gov. Terry McAuliffe and now Northam, argued in favor of the bill to require background checks, which had been part of the McAuliffe administration agenda.

Opponents of gun control testified that most checks result in “false positives” that hinder law-abiding citizens from purchasing guns, and that the checks do little to reduce crime.

Currently, only federally licensed gun dealers are required to do a background check before selling a firearm.

Erin Luper, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, said people in prison for gun crimes got their guns through theft or from family members.

“Background checks do not stop criminals from getting firearms,” she said.

No, they don’t.

This is a significant setback for Northam, but it’s not the end. Northam has four years to continue trying to ram his legislation through, and there will be elections in the meantime. That means he and his buddy Michael Bloomberg have plenty of opportunities to try and replace pro-gun legislators with their anti-gun puppets.

That means Virginians need to remain vigilant. As I noted earlier today, universal background checks simply don’t work as advertised. It’s completely unenforceable, and that doesn’t even touch on the false positives noted in the above blockquote. If you can’t tell when I got my gun, how can you tell if I underwent a background check or not?

I can’t help but wonder if people like Northam are just clueless, or sneaky. Is he ignorant over just how impossible this is to enforce, thus making the law useless, or does he know it and wants to use this to set up additional legislation later that would require gun registration?

Without knowing the man, I won’t guess. I’m inclined to think it’s the latter, but that’s filtered through a certain degree of paranoia regarding what Democrats seem to want to do when it comes to my constitutional rights.

Either way, though, Virginia gun owners have space to breath. Now, they need to dig in and get ready for the next fight, because, with someone like Northam, there is definitely going to be one. Dig in and make it so no one dares support it for fear of losing their reelection bid.