Quote of the Day
Virginia has recently been featured in a lot of headlines about gun control, for all the wrong reasons. A number of them have mentioned a federal gun control bill pending in the U.S. Senate, sponsored by Tim Kaine (D) and Mark Warner (D) of Virginia. Dubbed “The Virginia Plan to Reduce Gun Violence Act of 2026,” it tries to portray Virginia as a gun control leader whose policies could serve as a model for the rest of the nation. But, like most firearm prohibition branding, this framing is not only untrue, it is the opposite the truth. Virginia, in reality, is the victim of a national gun control agenda, not the progenitor of one.
The latest slate of gun controls laws unleashed on Virginia by its Democrat-controlled legislature and governor are not some thoughtful or tailored set of policies that organically arose from Virginia’s unique public safety picture or the particular dynamics of its crime. Instead, it is grab bag of generic policies pushed by national gun control groups, approved by their billionaire donors, and modeled on a globalist paradigm arising in nations that have no constitutional rights to arms. Virginia is simply an opportunist expansion market for these concepts, not their origin point.
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This Virginia Plan is the California Plan, which is the Everytown Plan, which is the Bloomberg Plan, which is the Australia Plan. It has nothing to do with the citizens of Virginia or with the Old Dominion’s culture and values. What an ignominious fall from grace for a state that produced some of the most important and influential of America’s Founding Fathers. In evaluating this fall, it is important to recognize that the core elements are being driven, not by ordinary Virginians, but by globally orientated billionaires, national public interest groups, and a Democratic National Committee that would love to see Richmond morph into the San Francisco of the East Coast.
Beware the rhetorical shift and media narrative to flip the script and make an established national policy package appear more locally grounded and politically palatable, even though its underlying structure has remained unchanged for years.
Further beware that your state may be next. If it can happen in the cradle of American Constitutionalism and the home of NRA’s Headquarters, no gun owning American should believe it could never come home to him or her.
NRA-ILA
April 28, 2026
NRA-ILA | Federal Bill Passes Off National Firearm Prohibition Agenda As “Virginia Model”
Lies and deception. It is an essential part of their culture.
I had overlooked the fact NRA headquarters is in Virginia as I watched those gun control bills breeze through the legislature. I believe that was the last of the major Gun Rights organizations to have their headquarters in a free state:
- Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (Washington State)
- Firearm Policy Coalition (California)
- Gun Owners of America (Also Virginia)
- National Association for Gun Rights (Colorado)
- Second Amendment Foundation (Washington State)
Did I miss any?
It must really suck to be such a strong advocate for gun owner rights that you work for such an organization and then suffer the daily infringement of your rights. The politicians inflicting this on innocent people should go to prison.
The only good things I can see about this is that it should motivate the people who work for these organizations and make it somewhat easier to find plaintiffs and file lawsuits.
Technically, the NRA is incorporated in New York. This was the source of all their legal problems and ironically the source of massive turnover on the board and budding reform. Having played in the legislative arena (in a completely different policy area), I am not one to criticize the NRA for lack of militancy. They have to play the cards they have and they are never going to be able to satisfy militants like me. Still they are effective and have been for a long time. The financial scandals were too much though. I moved support to SAF during that period and now and tentatively moving back. SAF is a great organization but their influence is in litigation not in the entire range of activities that the NRA does.
Free state? None of those fit that criterion. DIdn’t I see something a while back about the NRA moving to Texas?
Perhaps these days it’s less so, but there’s an argument to be made that national scope lobbying organizations need to have close physical proximity to DC.
If they wanted a state with decent gun laws reasonably close to DC, I would offer NH as probably the closest option.
West Virginia?
NRA, for a 150 years, could have and should have said nothing but “Shall not be infringed” in every lawsuit, court room and state house this country over.
But they decided to play politics instead standing upright on our founding principles.
And have lost every major battle since.
The “big gun” is and always will be the truth found in the 2A.
But nobody can seem to figure out how to use it. And for some strange reason no lawyer has even mentioned it since before 1934.
Like no one in the government of today enforcing 8USC 1324 on politicians bringing in 20 million illegals. No one above the street even mentions it.
Clear violations of 241 & 242 have been going on for close to a 100 hundred years now. And where was/is the NRA that whole time?
Sorry, the game is rigged. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it. (Except when they need a check, or your vote.)
Treat them accordingly.
Are we in the same timeline?
In the late Clinton years, gun confiscation seemed less than five years away. The only state with permitless carry was Vermont. Most states had “may issue” carry, meaning that if the sheriff or whoever was issuing a concealed carry permit was mad because you wouldn’t let him fuck your underage daughter, in the trash that permit would go. And if you concealed carried anyway, it wasn’t a weekend in county; you’d be cellmates with a serial killer in the state pen. This included such radical left states as Texas.
Thanks largely to the NRA which you deride as useless, the states switched over, one by one, to “shall issue,” meaning that they have to give a concealed carry permit if you are not banned from gun ownership by federal law. Eventually they started switching to permitless carry, which now is the law in over half the states in the US.
The NRA didn’t just lobby for liberalizing gun laws. They actively encouraged people to go shooting.
By 2008, when the Heller decision was released, the cultural status of guns had completely changed. If the Supreme Court had made any other decision, it would have been as out of place as if they had mandated colored lunch counters.
If the NRA and related groups hadn’t been actively pushing gun rights for the previous two decades, public opinion would have been much different, and most likely the Supreme Court would have ruled that the Second Amendment applied only to the National Guard.
The NRA certainly did provide important value during gun rights’ “time in the desert” and MTHead is being too hard on them, but you are giving them far too much credit.
I’m not saying that the NRA is perfect, nor am I saying that it is solely responsible for all our wins over the last quarter century. To give an obvious example, the Heller decision was set up not by NRA, but by the Second Amendment Foundation.
But to read MTHead, you would think that the current situation for gun owners is somewhere between that of the Whigs and that of the Auschwitz Jews. I mean, ” lost every battle since”? AYFKM?
His screed might be close to the truth if it had been written in 1999, before Clinton’s deal with Smith and Wesson backfired spectacularly. Since then we have been on offense on this issue, except in the immediate aftermath of Sandy Hook–and the antis didn’t succeed then either.
In order to get people enthused about a cause, such as the Second Amendment, it helps to honor those who got us this far. When you rewrite history to be an unending series of defeats for your side, you make it less likely that you will draw more supporters to the cause. Kids are honored to be picked by the Harlem Globetrotters; the Washington Generals only play for the money.
“His screed might be close to the truth if it had been written in 1999, before Clinton’s deal with Smith and Wesson backfired spectacularly.”
Your correct. I’m hard on the NRA as they put themselves up front. Collected the money. Then cut backdoor deals to keep the grift going.
What you call victory? Is retaking small portion of of ground that should have never been seeded in the first place. And much of it was stolen when the NRA was the only “Gun rights” group.
Most all with “help” of the NRA in the form compromise.
GOA, JFTPA, and 5 dozen other groups came to life because of the BS the NRA was doing behind the scenes.
Those are the people that have done most of the heavy lifting for the ground reclaimed.
And finally, Clinton and the S&W deal.
We did that, the grass roots people. We stopped buying S&W and shoved them into bankruptcy.
The NRA didn’t do any of that.
The 2A is an easy read. To bad the NRA forgot all about it when the NFA got passed.
And where were they when “Miller” got decided?
I’ll stop being hard on them when they quit playing lawyer games and start acting like the people they take money from truly matter.
Having an office in DC or Maryland or Virginia is the only way any of these pro-self-defense and Liberty groups can possibly be close enough to make a same day response to the Communists who wish to make the Second Amendment as much of a dead letter as the Third Amendment is, now.
I look forward to the day when every such communist organization is playing defense, in the form of a hopeless rear-guard action to preserve at least their tax exemption as the last ten officers and directors seek ways to cover their salaries and the rent for their office.
Democrats lie, steal, slander and cheat.
Relentlessly. In all things. For two centuries.