With the April 21 referendum just weeks away, Virginia gun owners have no time left—vote early today—to stop a power grab that would hand more influence to politicians already hostile to the Second Amendment.
On February 21, Governor Abigail Spanberger signed the most aggressive map overhaul in Virginia history and perhaps the nation’s most brazen. That pen stroke set the April 21 statewide vote in motion. If it passes, November elections will run on districts favoring one party’s agenda—meaning more power for lawmakers who have shown they will target gun owners, family gun stores, local shooting ranges, training instructors, and the Second Amendment rights we’ve defended through generations of court battles, legislative fights, and hard-won electoral victories.
The scheme tears up the bipartisan maps Virginia voters approved through their 2020 commission, replacing the fairer 6-5 split they delivered with a grotesque political Frankenstein designed to tilt the board 10-1 Democrat. Northern Virginia’s heavy Democratic vote, especially Fairfax County, gets sliced and stretched into bizarre, unnatural districts that snake deep into rural areas that have consistently delivered Republican votes election after election.
Farmers who hunt their own land to feed their families, small-town gunsmiths serving three generations of shooters, range operators teaching kids and women safe firearm handling—all get systematically packed, diluted, and rendered irrelevant. A relative handful of voters clustered in one suburban corner end up picking more of Virginia’s congressional delegation than hunters, veterans, law enforcement families, and small business owners spread across 42,775 square miles of the Commonwealth.
That’s why this fight matters to gun owners first and foremost, not as some abstract political exercise. But we must remain engaged; it is not the time to sit back and watch. In November, gun owners stayed home. And now, the new radical majority in the Virginia General Assembly has shown its hand, jamming through several egregious gun control bills that ended up on the governor’s desk, and many more that didn’t make it that far.
Bans targeting standard magazine capacity, crippling fees that price first-time shooters and young families out of basic training, mountains of red tape forcing rural gun stores to close overnight and indoor ranges to shutter training programs—these measures hit ordinary Virginians who obey every law and want nothing more than to teach their sons and daughters safe firearm handling, protect their families, or preserve family heirloom firearms for the next generation.
Many of these measures scream unconstitutionality and face a reckoning in court, but that doesn’t erase the immediate damage: canceled youth shooting leagues, family gun businesses fighting bankruptcy, concealed carriers second-guessed by store clerks at every gas station stop.
As a candidate, Abigail Spanberger called gerrymandering “detrimental to democracy.” As governor, she signed this gerrymandered map into law without a moment’s pause. In TV ads running right now, she explicitly urges voters to approve this very same measure on the April 21 ballot. Gun owners have learned the hard way not to trust Democrat words over Democratic deeds. When they get power, they use it against us—every single time.
If the Left wins on April 21, this map flips four U.S. House seats, turbocharging Virginia’s gun-control crusade straight to Washington—national registries tracking your every rifle transfer, confiscation schemes dressed up as voluntary “buybacks,” the entire anti-Second Amendment arsenal deployed at federal scale.
They’d kill President Trump’s Second Amendment priorities first: national reciprocity so your Virginia concealed carry permit works coast-to-coast without hassle, suppressor reform so hunters can protect their hearing for another decade in the woods. NRA defends gun rights against Democrats and Republicans alike when they attack our freedoms, but this particular crowd leads the assault.
This is your chance to make your voice heard. Vote no on April 21— vote early if you can. Learn how at Virginia’s election website. Talk to your neighbor at the range, your hunting friends, a mom taking her first concealed carry class. This isn’t just about maps. Your ability to defend your right to self-defense and your way of life all ride on this vote. Virginia’s ballot box stands between a new radical shift for the Commonwealth and your rights.
John Commerford is the Executive Director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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