In the latest episode of my Smart Girl Politics podcast, I chat with Cam Edwards of RedState sister site Bearing Arms about Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger's shameless trampling of the Second Amendment. Cam breaks down what her "suggestions" mean for law-abiding citizens, what the law says about what Democrats are trying to do, and what Virginians need to do to fight back.
Teri Christoph (00:05)
Welcome back to Smart Girl Politics. I'm Teri Christoph, as promised, I have for you all today, Cam Edwards. He's the grand poobah over at, is that your official title? Grand poobah at Bearing Arms, which is a a sister site to Red Sate where I write. And he's also, you have a show, Cam&Co. We wanted to,
Cam Edwards (00:17)
That is my effort, or yes.
Teri Christoph (00:30)
dig a little bit deeper in the weeds, not too far into the weeds, but talk a little bit about what's going on here in Virginia. Now I'm in Northern Virginia, so I like to talk to people like you, Cam, who are in the normal parts of the state, of the Commonwealth, to find out what's going on there. But kind of the lead up to having you on was, I was talking yesterday with our listeners about some of the things that Spanberger's been doing and talking about why she's so unpopular. And I think guns is...
Probably one of the big ones. I know that she ran on affordability and all this, but we're getting gungrabs. We're getting gerrymandering. We're getting all sorts of things, not affordability. But the big thing that we were kind of leading up to was this big assault weapons ban. And she had a deadline of midnight last night to sign it. And she didn't do that. As we went over, she had the option to sign it, to veto it, to not do anything, in which case it would have gone into effect.
Cam Edwards (01:25)
Mm-hmm.
Teri Christoph (01:25)
and then she could send it back to the General Assembly with some recommendations. And what did she do with it, Cam? And what, you know, what was it that she had on her desk and what is she proposing in a stead? Because it sounds not great.
Cam Edwards (01:40)
Yeah, it is not great. So yeah, she did decide that she would kick this bill back to the General Assembly with some proposed changes.
Which I think does a couple of things. One, I think it allows her to avoid headlines like governor signs gun ban ahead of this, you know, redistricting referendum next Tuesday. But the, changes that she's making, I don't know if this is actually going to be all that helpful because the changes that she is proposing make this bad bill a lot worse. So as the bill was written and it changed multiple times, you know, over the course of the legislative session.
But as it was sent to her desk, an assault firearm, that's the term that they use in Virginia, was basically any center fire semi-automatic rifle or pistol that had a fixed magazine capacity of 20 rounds or more, or a center fire semi-automatic rifle or pistol. If it was a rifle that had to have one feature and there were, you know, six or seven different features, everything from you know, a threaded barrel so you can attach a suppressor to it. If it was a pistol that needed two or more features to be considered an assault firearm. And what Spanberger has done is take that first definition that, you know, center fire, rifle or pistol, with a fixed magazine of 20 rounds. And instead it is now any center fire, rifle or pistol with a magazine in excess of 15 rounds.
So I'm not an attorney, but the way I read that is that if you're carrying a Glock 17, which comes standard with a 17 round magazine, that would be considered an assault firearm under Governor Spanberger's proposal. If you had a 10 round magazine, it would not be. But it magically becomes an assault firearm based on the magazine that you put into that gun, right?
And this bill bans the sale, the manufacture, and the transfer of firearms. It does not ban the possession of so-called assault firearms. But there is another bill that bans the public carrying of assault firearms throughout the entirety of Virginia, streets, roadways, public parks, basically any publicly accessible place. And so taken together, this could pose real problems for Virginia gun owners. I mean, it is not uncommon for people to have an everyday carry gun that has a magazine with 17 rounds or 20 rounds in it. That would be a class one misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and or a $2,500 fine if the General Assembly goes along with Governor Spanberger's proposal.
SEE ALSO: Abigail Spanberger Just Made Virginia's 'Assault Weapons' Ban Much, Much Worse
Inside Abigail Spanberger's Stunning Implosion
Teri Christoph (04:37)
Right. So, but from what I understand, she took a bad piece of legislation, let it kind of linger on her desk as long as possible, made it worse and sent it back. So now it goes back to the General Assembly, whose I don't predict is going to have any problems with what she is recommending because they recommended probably far worse. It seems to me that they're trying to hold their fire a little bit until after the midterms. Like they didn't unleash everything that they wanted to unleash on us Virginians this year.
So they're holding some of it back. So this is just kind of like a little step and then we're probably gonna see bigger and bigger steps. I know they say they're not gonna confiscate them, the Ghost Gun band was like, gosh, we're getting into weird registries and where is this going?
Cam Edwards (05:25)
Right.
Yeah, you know, you're absolutely right. I mean, that was another bill that she went ahead and signed into law, banning the possession of, you know, unfinished frames and receivers, banning the possession of un-serialized firearms. And it doesn't matter if you legally own one right now, right? As of July the 1st, it will be a crime for you to continue to possess those things. Yeah. And, you know, you say I know they don't say anything about confiscation, but I mean, you look what's going on in Rhode Island right now.
Teri Christoph (05:43)
Right, that's a law. That's one she actually had the guts to put her name on.
Cam Edwards (05:53)
Last year they passed a bill banning the sale that manufactured the transfer of so-called the so weapons. This year you've got a Democrat coming back and saying, you know, well now we need to ban the possession. We didn't do it all last year. And you know, these are battlefield weapons of war. They have no place in civil society. So why would we say it's okay for people to continue owning them?
Right. And so I think that is the natural progression for the gun grabbers. You start with a ban on the sale of the things so that there could be no more brought into the state and then you go after the ones that are in the hands of lawful gun owners. And this is what what Spanberger's proposing is sort of an intermediate step, right? Well we'll ban the public possession of these things. You can still, you know, keep them in your home. You can still have a quote unquote assault firearm. If you take it to a to a range, if you're doing lawful hunting, but if you want to, know, again, the way that they've defined this, if you want to carry a an ordinary semi-automatic pistol from the most commonly sold handguns in America, if you have a magazine that holds more than 15 rounds, we're going to consider that an assault firearm and you're committed a crime. And then they'll just, they'll just ratchet up from there.
Teri Christoph (07:03)
And I'm not a big, I'm not like the most proficient in guns, but it seems like a pretty arbitrary thing, like 15, 20, like is it to in the gun world. What does this mean to you all and people who are very, very big proponents of the Second Amendment?
Cam Edwards (07:26)
Yeah, well it is arbitrary because this legislation started out with a 10 round limit. And I think there were some Democrats who got skittish and they said, okay, well, we'll moderate this, right? And so we'll make it 15 rounds. But what's stopping them from coming back next year and saying, actually, you we were wrong and now it's five rounds.
Or now it's three rounds because the average defensive gun use they say only involves like 2.8 shots. So three rounds, that's plenty, right? It is entirely arbitrary. And when you look at the plain text of the second movement, obviously there's nothing in there that says the right to keep and bear arms with a capacity of X number of rounds shall not be infringed. Even if you look at the historic tradition of gun regulation in this country, and you think about the sea change that we saw from the single shot cap and ball pistols, the single shot muskets, repeating revolvers, to repeating rifles.
That was a significant change and yet there were no attempts to ban six shooters or the Henry repeating rifle. You know, the tagline for the advertisements was load on Sunday, shoot all week. There were, there were simply no efforts to say, well, that's too many rounds that could be fired. So we got to ban these things. The first magazine bans came about in the late 1980s. So these are, you know, modern inventions. they don't stand up to the test of the Supreme court has laid out and Heller and Bruin.
But unfortunately, right now, the Supreme Court has yet to take up a magazine ban case. They've got a couple of them pending. They've heard these cases. They've discussed them in conference, but they have not granted cert. They've not denied cert. So we're waiting on the Supreme Court to take one of these cases and say once and for all, no, you cannot do this. But until the Supreme Court takes that step, you're going to see anti-gun Democrats in states like Virginia basically everywhere they think they can get away with it propose these types of restrictions on lawful gun ownership.
Teri Christoph (09:27)
Yeah, and I think people are looking on at Virginia in absolute dismay. I've heard from a lot of Virginians who blame Northern Virginia. I think that that's absolutely fair. Northern Virginia's kind of ruined it for the rest of Virginia. But there's a fair number of gun owners up here who are not very happy about this. People are trying to make sense of what's going on in Virginia. And unfortunately, there's no making sense of it. It's just Democrats with unchecked power.
Cam Edwards (09:53)
I think that's right. you know, I lived in Fairfax, Virginia for eight years from 2004 to 2012 until I just, my wife and I just said, can't, we can't do this anymore. And you know, so we started looking and we looked at a couple of places in West Virginia and I'm kind of kicking myself now for not picking one of those places, but instead we settled in the heart of Virginia. We're about eight miles from the geographic center of the state. It's a beautiful place. I love my neighbors. I love where I live. But you're right. The influx of progressives and liberals in Northern Virginia, to a lesser degree, I think in places like Richmond, it has canceled out.
I think the traditional values that a lot of Virginians have. And, you know, that's why I'm curious to see what happens next Tuesday, because I think this is an opportunity. think there were, listen, I we can get into last November's elections in Virginia. think we had some pretty flawed candidates who ran some pretty flawed campaigns. you know, for whatever reason, Democrats had a fantastic election day, right? They grabbed a supermajority in the House of Delegates. They felt like they've got a mandate. And next Tuesday, the first real chance for Virginia to stand up and say no. Whatever you thought the election was about, it wasn't about giving you unchecked power and we don't like the direction that the state is going in.
Teri Christoph (11:22)
Right, and iI've seen little hints here and there now. It's obviously really hard to tell how the early voting has been going on for a while now. It's very hard to tell how it's going, but I've heard a little things here and there that it's not going the Democrats' way, that it's probably not going to be a landslide or anything like that, but that everybody's internal polling is showing it not going their way.
So I know that you've made the point that Spanberger kind of punted on this piece of legislation on the firearms, the assault firearms, whatever you want to call it, ban, to kind of hopefully keep some people, you know, I guess the thought being that a bunch of people would get very mad about the legislation if she was to sign it and they would go out and vote. Now I hope they're still mad and still go out and vote. Because I think that's underplaying. People are paying attention to what she's doing and I think there is going to be a backlash against her. And her poll numbers are really bad.
Cam Edwards (11:53)
Yeah. They are. And I suspect that, you know, so she'll avoid the headlines, right? But there's enough, I think, word of mouth going around about what these proposals from Spanberger would do, how much worse they would make this gun ban bill, that I don't think, I don't think she's going to be able to, you know, tamp down enthusiasm for the no votes. I think that there are, you know, I know where I live and again it's hard to tell based on yard signs, but I have seen literally one sign that says vote yes to stop the MAGA paragraph versus 50 or 60 signs just in my rural county. Vote no, you know, keep Virginia rural or keep rural representation. And I...
Teri Christoph (12:44)
I think that's right. Even up here in Northern Virginia, there's a few yes signs. I'm in Leesburg, I'm in Loudoun, I'm in the woo woo crazy part of the world. And there's been a few, but there's not a lot. We have a say no in our yard. We haven't heard, we haven't gotten fire bombed or anything. So it's gonna be real interesting to see how this goes.
Cam Edwards (13:12)
It is, yeah. And as far as the gun bills that are signed, we've seen Army Dillon, head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division, basically put Virginia on notice that they'll be litigating this gun ban. Hopefully some of the other provisions that are coming into play because there is a gun storage mandate that's basically a one size fits all policy. If you have a minor in your home, you are required to store that firearm so that it's inaccessible to that juvenile. Even if, again, you've got a 16, 17 year old at home, want them to have access to a firearm, just in case, God forbid, somebody breaks in, you can't do that as a parent, you know, under this legislation.
There is a bill, and I don't know if is that DOJ can sue about, but unfortunately there's something, a Virginia Gun Violence Prevention Center that a Democrat's passed. This is another one that Spanberger is proposing some revisions to. She wants to officially add gun control activists to the board of this group.
I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous. So there's a lot of bad stuff coming our way. Hopefully we can mitigate some of this through litigation, but we aren't gonna be able to stop every bit of it. And that's why it's so important that, know, Virginians get out and vote, not just next Tuesday, but every chance we have to, you know, elect some sane public officials and return some sanity to the state Capitol in Richmond. We need to do it.
Teri Christoph (14:51)
Yeah, and that is the last thing that I wanted to ask you about because people ask me all the time what can we do to fight back, particularly, I think, as we've kind of focused on guns in the last few weeks. Obviously, gerrymandering, getting out and voting against the referendum right now, early voting is going on, I think, to the 18th then the 21st is the actual day of voting if you want to vote on the day of. People particularly that are concerned about losing their guns.
The Virginia State Police put out this wackadoo post last week about like, we're not gonna confiscate your guns. Like, whoa, whoa, where did this come from? Like, what's going on? I think people are understandably concerned about which direction it's going in. people are like, what can we do? I know there's been some gun lobbying days in Richmond. There was one where they were giving out magazines. I was like, we didn't know. We gotta get down to Richmond and get some of these.
But people want to know what they can do. mean, voting, yes, the gerrymandered get out and vote. Do not, and midterms are going to be huge, huge, huge, huge. But what do we do about them taking the guns? It's like there's almost nothing we can do other than to hope that Harm Meet Dylan is serious about coming in. But people want to do something. So do you have any ideas for them?
Cam Edwards (16:06)
Yeah. I do. know, DOJ is not going to be the only ones litigating. We're going to see challenges in both federal and state courts. you know, if you're not already a member of a group like the Virginia Citizens Defense League or the Virginia Shooting Sports Association, sign up, join, become a member. Support the national Second Amendment organizations of your choice, because they're all going to be involved in litigation efforts here. But then also, you know, I think on a longer term project,
And I get some pushback for this. say, ah, this is a waste of time and energy. There's no point in trying to convince Democrats that their Second Amendment rights are important to them. I still believe in the power of taking people to the range and exposing them to shooting, dispelling some of the myths and the fears that go along with gun ownership on the left. And if you think about it, from the lefties' perspective, they want to... radically transformed policing.
They say that we're over policed. They say that, you know, we're putting too many people in prison. Okay, well, if that's the case, then why do you want to put more laws on the books that are going to send people to prison for a victimless crime of possessing a firearm or possessing a magazine, right? I think there is a liberal argument to make in favor of the Second Amendment and opposed to gun control. And I feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall when I make that argument sometimes to liberals, but I still think that it is worth making.
From a long-term tactical perspective, we need to erode the support that gun control has on the left. We need to do what we can to identify pro-second amendment Democrats, or at least make Democrats feel like they don't have to be ashamed. I mean, this is crazy thing, Teri, right? 15 years ago, a quarter of the Democrats in the House of Representatives were A-rated by the NRA.
Teri Christoph (17:55)
Does that exist anymore?
Cam Edwards (18:06)
15 years ago, and now it's zero, right? I actually just wrote about this at a Bearing Arms for our VIP piece today. There's a race up in New York where there is a Democrat, she's a challenging Claudia Tenney. And so this Democrat made a comment when she declared that, know, this was one of her areas of disagreement with Democrats. She says, I'm pretty pro-gun, I think Democrats wanna over-regulate.
And now one of her primary opponents is trying to make this a campaign issue saying, see, she doesn't fit in. She's not one of us. So, you know, is she going to be better than Claudia Taney on the Second Amendment? No, I doubt it. But I'd love to get to a point where when we go cast our ballots, we're choosing between two candidates who are at least relatively good in supporting our Second Amendment rights. And, know, that's something that we obviously could really use in Virginia right now.
Teri Christoph (18:37)
Yep. Yeah, I'm not going to hold my breath for up here in Northern Virginia, but the rest of you all, I know you can probably make it happen. I have great faith in the rest of Virginia. And there are a fair number of people up here in Northern Virginia who are not crazy. Not all of us, but I feel like there's still a spirit of Virginia that exists. And I think we're going to come through these unfortunate few years of Democrat control and be okay.
We're going to have to show up and fight. We're going to have to join together in these organizations. Like you said, we're going to have to talk to our neighbors about it and convince them. So hopefully these are great ideas for people who I think are making plans to move out of the state instead of staying and fighting. So if you're going to stay and fight, talk to Cam, talk to me. Like, you know, I want to help fight for it because I've lived here a long time. I've lived here way longer than Abigail Spanberger has been here and I'm really ticked about it.
We gotta do something productive with it.
Cam Edwards (19:56)
I'm right there with you. And I will say, you to those who are leaving, you know, again, keep your membership in the Virginia Citizens Defense League, keep your membership in the Virginia Shooting Sports Association. Even if you're going away, you're, you can still help fight the good fight. ⁓And, know, I don't begrudge anybody who's leaving. I mean, this, where I live, this is supposed to be my forever home. You know, I've buried my wife, I've buried my son here. I don't want to leave.
But I can actually envision a day where I say, all right, I'm moving to West Virginia. I don't want that to happen. But I'm going to stay and fight for as long as I can. And I'm glad you are, too.
Teri Christoph (20:30)
Well, that's how I feel. I'm not going anywhere until it just becomes impossible, it could, but I don't think it's going to. I think like we see California, there's some signs of life of Republicans and things like that. But anyway, I really appreciate your time, Cam. Where can people find you and read all of your work and kind of probably hear from you about how they can fight back?
Cam Edwards (20:50)
Absolutely. I'm just going to BearingArms.com. You can find the Bearing Arms Cam&Co. podcast right there on the homepage. And that is the best place to find my writing. can also occasionally find me on X at Cam Edwards. I'm getting a little bit better about being on social media. took a couple of years off, but I'm, I'm semi-regular now for, for now we'll see.
Teri Christoph (21:07)
Good for the head to not be on it. Well, we probably need you because I know a lot of people have said like we need to, you know, people that are trying to save Virginia need to be everywhere talking about it all the time. And I don't disagree with that, but it is probably healthy to take a break. But yeah, definitely go to Bearing Arms and catch up with Cam and really appreciate you. And I might have to drag you back here if this nonsense keeps on going.
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