Virginia Is For . . .

At this point, it's hard to tell.

The Virginia State Senate recently passed three bills that would ban guns in public spaces, limit monthly purchases of firearms, and and require background checks for transfers of firearms.  If the House of Delegates passes these bills - and both houses of the General Assembly are controlled by Democrats - Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, will most certainly sign them.  However, the House of Delegates got a big wake-up call on Monday from gun-rights activists.

About twenty-two thousand Second Amendment supporters descended on the State Capitol in Richmond to demonstrate against the new bills, with many of them coming from out of the state.  Northam declared a state of emergency in Richmond in recognition of the violence that gripped Charlottesville over racially charged demonstrations there in 2017, but the demonstration in Richmond was peaceful.  Maybe that's because many gun-control activists didn't bother to show up.

Despite widespread support for the gun-control legislation passed by the Senate, gun rights activists  in Virginia have made it clear that they are not amused and they are not going anywhere.  I wouldn't be surprised if the House of Delegates fails to pass any of these bills out of fear of reprisals. And even if they do pass, expect them to be challenged in court.

Another court challenge could come against the Virginia General Assembly for its other major vote - ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).  Virginia became the 38th state to do so, thus allowing the amendment denying restrictions to equal rights n the basis of sex to become part of the Constitution.  There's just one thing wrong - the amendment had a federal ratification deadline that came and went in 1982.  Virginia is the third state to ratify it after the deadline, but as long as the deadline is on the books, demanding that the ERA become the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution at this point is comparable to winning a raffle and reporting to claim the prize a week later despite the ticket's printed requirement that the prize must be claimed within twenty-four hours.

The Justice Department - headed by a patriarchal Attorney General - is already planning to nullify Virginia's action, saying that the law is the law and the amendment cannot be added to the Constitution, and the Democrats lack the support in Congress and from the White House to negate the 1982 deadline.  Don't expect the ERA to be considered anything but DOA until and unless a long, drawn-out legal battle ends in its favor.  Sadly, though, a forty-year-old woman - that is, a woman born the year the ERA deadline passed - likely won't live to see this amendment be inserted into the Constitution even if she lives to be a hundred.

Virginia has been hostile to such liberal reform in the past.  But while Virginia may have changed, America, just as assuredly, cannot. :-(