On June 23, 2020, Jordan Stein, the Director of Communications, published a press release announcing Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, and Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL)’s lawsuit attempting to impede the enforcement of Virginia’s Universal Background Check law that becomes effective on July 1st.
The law subjects nearly all firearms transactions to a fee and a background check from a federal firearms licensee (FFL). Additionally, this law prohibits young adults from the ages of 18 to 20 to purchase handguns.
“Laws like Universal Background Checks are laughed at by criminals who have no regard for the law — and no intent to follow it. But this law forces honest citizens to prove their innocence to the government in order to acquire a firearm,” GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt stated. “By making the ability to acquire a firearm so burdensome, Universal Background Checks flip a right that ‘shall not be infringed’ on its head.”
The suit is also disputing the law’s backdoor prohibition on 18-20-year-old adults buying handguns. Due to the fact that FFLs cannot transfer a handgun to individuals below the age of 21 and private transactions are now prohibited, young adults of this age demographic cannot legally acquire a handgun. The suit declared, “Yet now, as a result of [Virginia’s Universal Background Checks], they are prohibited from acquiring handguns. This result is incompatible with the plain text of Article I, Section 13 [of Virginia’s Constitution], which protects the right to keep and bear arms in order to preserve ‘a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms.’”
The suit can be viewed in its entirety here.
