Article from For Liberty by Norm Leahy.

Virginia’s state Senate recently refused to pass legislation banning assault weapons, which came as a bit of a surprise to many observers. The conventional wisdom was the Democrat-controlled Senate would follow the lead of the Democrat-controlled House and approve a ban backed by the state’s Democratic governor.

So why didn’t it?

There are any number of theories, but among the most plausible is that some Senate Democrats believed an assault weapons ban was asking too much:

“It’s just piling on,” he said in an interview last week, after he and three other Democrats joined with Republicans to kill the ban on future sales of assault weapons in committee. “You can’t discount people that were raised and grew up in this state and have their own traditions. You can’t just suddenly kick them to the curb.”

Those are practically fighting words to some anti-gun activists. But Petersen’s also touched on something that was amply demonstrated in the massive protest over gun rights in January.

There are, indeed, limits to what citizens will accept. That doesn’t mean Democrats won’t make another attempt to ban assault weapons. As Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax), who was among those voting against the ban wrote, the legislation the House was poorly drafted, and ill-conceived.

But he was also quite adamant that a ban would be back in 2021: “I am wholly committed to seeing this through and we did not ‘kill the assault weapons bill.’”

Virginia gun-rights advocates: your fight is only getting started.

Image Credit: Craig from Richmond, Virginia`, United States [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]