Yesterday, May 14, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed Senate Bill 749 / House Bill 217 into law. This piece of legislation represents a direct assault on the rights of law-abiding sportsmen, hunters, and firearm owners across the Commonwealth. Despite massive pushback from our community and gun rights advocates, the anti-sportsman lobby successfully pushed this restrictive measure across the finish line.

What SB 749 / HB 217 Does

Beginning July 1, 2026, this new law enacts severe restrictions that will turn standard, commonly owned firearms into restricted items:

• Future Sales Ban: It creates a Class 1 misdemeanor for any person to import, sell, manufacture, purchase, or transfer semi-automatic firearms classified under the state’s definition of an “assault firearm”. The legislation employs a feature-based definition to classify “assault firearms”. Under SB 749 and HB 217, prohibited items include:
  • Rifles: Semi-automatic, center-fire rifles with detachable magazines and specific features, such as folding/collapsible stocks, pistol grips, or threaded barrels.
  • Pistols: Semi-automatic center-fire pistols with fixed magazines holding over 15 rounds, or those with detachable magazines and similar banned features.
  • Shotguns: Semi-automatic shotguns with folding stocks or capacities exceeding seven rounds.
• Magazine Restrictions: The law prohibits the sale, transfer, manufacture, or purchase of standard-capacity ammunition magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds.
• Severe Penalties: Anyone convicted of violating this law faces a three-year prohibition on purchasing, possessing, or transporting any firearm within Virginia.
• Grandfathering Limitations: While the law allows individuals to retain ownership of covered firearms and magazines legally possessed prior to July 1, 2026, it permanently freezes the market, meaning you can never replace, upgrade, or legally pass these common tools down to the next generation of hunters and shooters within the state.

Please rest assured that this battle is far from over. The Sportsmen’s Alliance legal team is analyzing every possible legal avenue to challenge this blatant overreach. This law punishes peaceful, law-abiding citizens rather than targeting actual criminals, and we believe it directly violates both the U.S. Constitution and the Virginia Constitution.

Please share this update with your family, friends, and fellow sportsmen. Virginia’s sportsmen must remain united as we navigate these new legal challenges.

The Sportsmen’s Alliance guarantees hunting, fishing and trapping for the American sportsman now and forever. We’re there when sportsmen need us most. We are the only organization specifically created to protect the individual hunter, angler and trapper – no matter the threat. We will never compromise when it comes to defending our way of life in the courts, in the legislatures, in the public square and at the ballot box. We make this promise to the American sportsman: we will never give up and never give in while proudly securing our future against those seeking to destroy our values, beliefs, and traditions.

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