05/23/2026
Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a landmark bill last week banning the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in Virginia -- making it the 11th state in the country to do so, in the very state the National Rifle Association calls home.
Senate Bill 749 and its House companion make it illegal to import, sell, manufacture, purchase, or transfer assault-style fi****ms and magazines holding more than 15 rounds in the commonwealth. It takes effect July 1. "I am signing this bill into law because fi****ms designed to inflict maximum casualties do not belong on our streets," Spanberger said. "We are taking this step to protect families and support the law enforcement officers who work every day to keep our communities safe."
It was the centerpiece of more than twenty gun-safety measures she signed this session -- a near-total reversal from her predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, who vetoed roughly two dozen firearm bills, including nearly identical assault-weapons and magazine measures, year after year. For years, versions of these bills had passed the legislature only to die on the governor's desk. The change that made them law was the election of a governor who would pick up the pen.
Spanberger, a former federal law enforcement officer who once volunteered with Moms Demand Action, won by 15.36 points -- the largest margin in Virginia's history, and more than ten times Donald Trump's meager 1.5-point victory the year before, one of the narrowest presidential victory margins since World War II. She ran on gun safety -- laws widely supported by the state's voters -- and she is delivering exactly what she promised.
These weapons are not the typical American crime gun -- handguns drive the daily toll of gun violence, from suicides to domestic and street homicides. But assault weapons are the weapon of the deadliest mass shootings, and their share of those attacks is rising: assault-style rifles were used in a majority of mass shootings over the last three years, and the incidents involving them take the most lives. They are built, as Spanberger put it, to inflict maximum casualties.
The lawsuits came within hours. The NRA, the Fi****ms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation, and Gun Owners of America all sued in state and federal court. And the Trump administration's Justice Department has threatened a challenge of its own -- Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, posted a screenshot of the signed bill on social media with three words: "See you in court!"
That threat is not idle, and to understand it, look at what Dhillon's office is already doing elsewhere. She runs the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division -- the office created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, at the height of the civil rights movement, to send federal lawyers into the South to sue officials who kept Black Americans from voting. It was built to enforce the 15th Amendment, to defend citizens against the governments denying them their rights.
Dhillon has spent her tenure pointing it in the opposite direction. She has withdrawn the Justice Department from voting-rights lawsuits in Georgia, Virginia, and Alabama, canceled the police-reform agreements reached after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and redirected the division away from the discrimination it was built to fight -- toward combating DEI programs and what she calls "woke ideology." Roughly 75% of its career attorneys have left or been forced out.
And she has stood up a brand-new 'Second Amendment Section' inside that division and aimed it at overturning states' gun safety laws -- against the will of the majority of those states' voters. In early May, it sued Colorado over its limit on high-capacity magazines, and sued the city of Denver over an assault weapons ban that has stood since 1989. For decades, conservatives have championed states' rights and warned against federal overreach. Now a Republican administration is using the full power of the federal government to try to strike down popular gun laws passed by states' own voters and legislatures.
Dhillon dismissed Colorado's magazine limit as "political virtue signaling" -- a Trump administration official, running the office founded to protect Americans' civil rights, waving away a state's effort to confront a form of violence that kills more than 40,000 Americans every year. Colorado passed that limit after the 2012 Aurora theater massacre, where a gunman used a 100-round magazine to murder twelve people and wound dozens.
Republicans in the state have tried to repeal it again and again since 2014, and failed every time. Colorado's courts upheld it. Its legislature just voted to strengthen it. And the federal complaint now seeking to undo it bears the name of Barry Arrington -- the former chief counsel for Rocky Mountain Gun Owners who now runs the Justice Department's new Second Amendment Section. Before joining the government, Arrington sued to overturn this same magazine ban and lost; his case was dismissed in 2024. Two years later, he is bringing the fight again -- this time from inside the United States Department of Justice.
So Virginia's fight is headed to the same courts -- and the record there favors the law. Every federal appeals court to rule on bans like this one has upheld them, including the Fourth Circuit that covers Virginia, which affirmed Maryland's assault-weapons ban as recently as 2024. The gun groups know this; their own filings all but concede they expect to lose at the lower levels and are racing to push the question to a Supreme Court that has signaled it may finally take it up. The outcome there is genuinely uncertain. But on July 1, Virginia's law takes effect, and a state that voted overwhelmingly for change will have it.
The people who built this win were never only counting on the courts. They built it standing outside the Capitol, year after year, in red shirts. Moms Demand Action volunteers ran for office themselves and now make up a fifth of the Democratic majority in Virginia's House of Delegates; five of the gun bills passed this session were carried by former volunteers. The governor who signed them was one of them once too. So was the next generation now stepping into the fight.
Among them was Hattie Friedman, a student leader of the Students Demand Action group at First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach -- a city that lived through its own mass shooting in 2019, when a gunman killed twelve people in a municipal building. "My generation has grown up in the shadow of mass shootings, and today Virginia took a massive step toward making sure we don't have to live in fear anymore," she said. "We fought for this, we voted for this, and today, we won."
--> To learn how to get involved nationally or with a local chapter or to donate to support responsible gun safety laws, visit Everytown for Gun Safety at https://everytown.org
While it's shocking to others around the world, school shootings have become such a normalized part of American childhood that there are now numerous books for young readers about life after the trauma of experiencing gun violence in school.
For a new picture book about a young girl who survives a school shooting in which her friend is killed, we recommend "After: A Survivor's Story" for ages 5 and up at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780807530955 (picture book) and https://amzn.to/42bjwiW (Amazon)
For two powerful books for young readers about the experience of losing a sibling in a school shooting, we recommend "Mockingbird" for ages 9 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/mockingbird) and "The Shape of Thunder" for ages 10 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-shape-of-thunder)
The Newbery Honor book "Simon Sort of Says" tells the story of a boy grappling with moving forward after surviving a school schooling for ages 10 and up at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781368099585 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/4oYKKmO (Amazon)
"AfterMath" explores the experience of girl who becomes the new kid in a class full of school shooting survivors for ages 10 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/aftermath
For a poignant and ultimately hopeful graphic novel about one survivor's journey toward healing following a school shooting, check out "Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting" for ages 15 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/numb-to-this
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For the Virginia Mercury's report on Governor Spanberger signing the assault weapons ban and the full package of bills, visit https://virginiamercury.com/2026/05/15/spanberger-signs-assault-weapons-ban-package-of-criminal-justice-and-energy-bills/
Colorado Public Radio detailed the federal lawsuit against Colorado's magazine ban, including the former Rocky Mountain Gun Owners attorney who signed the complaint: https://www.cpr.org/2026/05/06/federal-lawsuit-colorado-gun-ammo-magazine-restriction/
The Leadership Conference's Civil Rights organization documented Harmeet Dhillon's overhaul of the Civil Rights Division and its shift away from traditional civil rights enforcement: https://civilrights.org/2026/04/07/harmeet-dhillon/
Everytown and Moms Demand Action shared statements on the Virginia victory, including the volunteers and students who fought for it: https://www.everytown.org/press/victory-for-gun-safety-governor-spanberger-signs-historic-assault-weapons-ban-and-comprehensive-gun-safety-package-into-law/
Pew Research Center's analysis of what the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. is here: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/28/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-us/
