Virginia's Hard Anti-Gun Push Worries Some at Newspaper in Neighboring State

Bad political ideas like gun control behave a little bit like a virus. They start in one place, take hold, then spread out to infect other places. Yeah, the metaphor can break down after a certain point, especially if you're an anti-gunner actively trying to break it, but you get what I'm saying. Bad ideas never stay in one place.

Virginia lawmakers, who ran on things like affordability, have taken office and done really two things above all else: Raise taxes and restrict guns. Oh, and a gerrymandering attempt that's so blatant that it laughable.

We can see what their priorities really are.

However, what's happened in the Old Dominion State, while not particularly new, is probably worrying some in the neighboring states because bad ideas never stay put.

Advocates for gun control have pushed more than a dozen separate bills through Virginia’s state legislature in less than two months.

We must question if these proposals are truly being carefully deliberated upon.

Some of these changes, such as bans on long-legal types of firearms, deserve more transparent debate in any legislature than what this rush by Virginia’s lawmakers has allowed.

As we have editorialized in the past, much of what skeptics about our Second Amendment and our right to keep and bear arms envision simply isn’t possible in a free society — we fear the mechanisms and practices that making these proposals work would require would violate much more than the Second Amendment — as important as it is.

Investigation and enforcement of some of these policies, we fear, would also erode principles of due process, of freedom of speech and of the rights to peacefully assemble and associate.

As we noted nearly two years ago, politicians pushing for gun control in New York could not stop themselves from delving into encroaching on other rights as well, using the regulatory power of the state to harass and impede legitimate businesses that did not disfavor legal firearms-related businesses.

Of course, this pro-gun, pro-rights editorial--what felt strange to write, let me tell ya--doesn't mention a concern of bad ideas spreading so much as them just being terrible ideas.

That's totally acceptable, in part because these ideas weren't new, and proximity isn't necessary for terrible laws from other states to be imported.

Bringing up the fact that this all happened so quickly that there's no way there was due consideration paid to these measures is pretty accurate, of course. None of the concepts was new, but every state implements them a smidge differently, and it's those details that matter, as we saw in Missouri with the Second Amendment Preservation Act. One little detail created a massive problem.

Not that I think Gov. Abigail Spanberger really cares all that much.

But part of the issue is that the push for gun control can and will spill over into other rights, as the editorial notes. New York attacked freedom of speech by trying to destroy the NRA, not for anything the NRA did beyond its core mission, mind you, but because of its core mission. Yeah, the Wayne LaPierre stuff didn't help, but this jihad started before anyone knew any of that stuff.

And it will go beyond that. Let's not forget that New York wanted to require people to hand over their social media accounts to make sure no one was guilty of WrongThink before they'd give them a permit. Others want to require you to open your house up to the government so they can make sure you've got proper storage or whatever other crap they can concoct.

So there's a reason for whoever wrote this editorial to be worried.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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