Anti-Gunners Discover Unintended Consequences of Gun Bans

Bans on so-called assault weapons are popular in anti-gun states, to say the least, but those days might be numbered. The Supreme Court has agreed to finally hear a couple of assault weapon ban cases, and I think everyone knows more or less how those will go. There’s almost no chance that the same Court that gave us Bruen will uphold bans on modern sporting rifles.

But before the Supreme Court decided to hear it, numerous anti-gun states had passed such laws. Virginia, this year, became the latest.

And, at the Washington Post, Stephen Gutowski has a piece about how that impacted gun sales in the Old Dominion State.

For a short time, the statute seemed to be succeeding. By July 1, when the law took effect, the targeted guns were gone from stores statewide. Background check data soon showed, however, that the legislation appeared to have had the unintended, if unsurprising, effect of spiking sales before it went into effect.

In June, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) reported a remarkable increase in reviews for long gun sales, which include rifles and shotguns. The vetting system — an imperfect but reliable gauge for sales — saw a single-month record in Virginia and more than three times the number of checks during the same period in 2025. The state saw 43,553 NICS long gun checks last month, more than any other state, despite being the 12th most populous.

That, moreover, was just the culmination of a months long sales surge, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Its analysis showed that NICS checks on gun sales were up 26 percent year-over-year in January. The number jumped to 55 percent in February, 70 percent in March and 78 percent in April, before surging to more than 100 percent in May.

As July 1 approached, gun-rights groups sounded the alarm. Gun Owners of America posted about the pending restrictions to their more than 400,000 followers on X. The Virginia Citizens Defense League pushed Virginians to buy the soon-to-be-banned guns.

Some sellers said that fear of a ban motivated customers to buy AR-style rifles for the first time. “In fact, we’ve seen today more first-time buyers, I mean, of course, over the past three to four weeks, but even today we’ve had a number of people who have come in for first-time buying,” Mark Tosh, manager of Town Gun Shop of Richmond, told WTVR in June. “They’re like, ‘This is my first time, can you show me how you know about ARs, and what can I get, and what do you have available?’” Another retailer in Northern Virginia reportedly sold more than 1,000 of the rifles during the last weekend of June.

All told, then, there are probably tens of thousands more “assault firearms” in civilian hands throughout the Old Dominion than before the law was passed.

This isn’t really surprising to me, and it’s because of something I call “immediacy.” 

Basically, when something is always available, there’s no real reason to push to obtain the thing or visit the thing. For example, when my father was stationed in Brooklyn during his Navy days, neither he nor my mother ever visited the Statue of Liberty, despite wanting to. It was always there and they could always find time to go. That is, right up until Dad got immediate orders for Vietnam and they had to pack up and move in a hurry. Then, suddenly, they were scrambling to try and find a chance to visit.

This is the same thing that happened in 1994 when the federal Assault Weapon Ban was passed. A lot of people who never really concerned themselves with AR-15s or similar firearms suddenly recognized this was their last chance at a pre-ban gun and 30-round magazines. They flocked to gun stores to get them while they could.

The AR-15 has been the most popular long gun in the United States since then.

In Virginia, the same thing happened. The immediacy of a ban meant those who wanted such guns swarmed gun stores and bought everything they could before they were gone.

The end result is, as always, more of these firearms in people’s hands than if they’d done nothing at all.

I get that anti-gunners don’t like these kinds of firearms, and there’s all the rhetoric about mass killers using them, but mass killers have killed just fine without them, unfortunately. Virginia should know this, since Virginia Tech is still the deadliest school shooting in American history.

So if they don’t want people buying guns they might not have worried about getting before, they should seriously rethink the idea of trying to ban them. This isn’t limited to assault weapon bans, either. That’s especially true since it’s likely the time remaining for those is limited. It goes for any ban. 

Nothing is so alluring as something forbidden, and nothing is so attractive as something you might have thought about, but now suddenly have no time left to get one.

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

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