The Virginia House of Delegates approved an assault weapons ban on a party line vote Friday.
Fairfax County Democratic Del. Dan Helmer’s bill would end the sale and transfer of assault firearms manufactured after July 1, 2024. It also prohibits the sale of certain large capacity magazines.
“This bill would stop the sale of weapons similar to those I and many of the other veterans carried in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Helmer said.
That’s a bad precedent to set. There are certainly reasons why this can be upheld, but saying that anything new is by default banned unless explicitly allowed is the opposite of what it states in the constitution.
That would allow for decisions like the freedom of speech doesn’t exist on the internet because the internet didn’t exist when the constitution was penned.