Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger just signed six gun control bills and amended four others into law, and the media barely noticed. That's exactly how the anti-Second Amendment movement operates now—they've learned that incremental restrictions, buried in technical language and justified through compassion narratives, provoke far less resistance than the sweeping bans that failed at the federal level. But what Spanberger has unleashed in Virginia isn't subtle at all: it's a systematic campaign to strip gun rights from citizens through administrative designation rather than criminal conviction, and it represents the exact kind of tyranny the Framers feared when they wrote the Second Amendment.
The most egregious of Spanberger's amendments targets veterans requiring fiduciaries for financial management. Under current federal law, the VA can flag veterans receiving money management services and send their names to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, effectively banning them from firearm ownership without due process, without conviction, and without even a mental health adjudication in many cases. The distinction matters immensely: under the Gun Control Act of 1968, prohibited persons categories were strictly defined—felons, domestic abusers, those adjudicated mentally ill, drug users. The VA's practice stretches that framework beyond its constitutional limits. GOP lawmakers have demanded a permanent fix to bar the VA from this practice, and they're right. FBI Director Kash Patel has begun coordinating with Virginia to remove wrongly-flagged veterans from NICS, acknowledging what should be obvious: the system is broken and unconstitutional. Yet Spanberger's amendments move in the opposite direction, further entrenching the machinery that punishes men and women for the sin of needing help managing money—a condition that bears no relationship whatsoever to dangerousness or fitness to exercise constitutional rights.
“When government can decide you're unfit to keep and bear arms based on receiving financial services, it has crossed a line that the Constitution forbids.”
The deeper constitutional problem lies in how these restrictions evade the Bruen standard that should now govern all gun regulations. In NYSRPA v. Bruen, the Supreme Court rejected means-ends scrutiny and established a clear test: gun regulations must fit the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation at the founding. When you look at the Founding era, there is simply no historical analogue for disarming citizens based on financial incompetence or fiduciary status. The Framers understood that the right to bear arms was fundamental to resisting tyranny—as Rep. Thomas Massie correctly reminded the Senate, the Second Amendment exists precisely as a check on government overreach. Yet Virginia's approach treats gun ownership as a privilege to be removed through administrative fiat whenever bureaucrats decide someone isn't responsible enough. This isn't regulation; it's confiscation dressed in social worker language. The Citizens Committee has already flagged serious problems with how Spanberger's HB 1525 amendment operates, and they're correct to sound the alarm. If a man is too mentally compromised to manage his own finances, there's a constitutional process for adjudication. If he's not, then his Second Amendment rights stand inviolate, regardless of whether the VA thinks he needs a money manager.
Spanberger's campaign also reveals something the health freedom movement understands perfectly well: progressives are willing to use any government apparatus to achieve their ends, whether that's health mandates or gun restrictions. The parallels are instructive. Both movements depend on convincing citizens that experts know better than individuals do about managing their own affairs. Both rely on shame and social pressure to overcome constitutional resistance. Both exploit legitimate concerns—mental health stigma in this case, public health in others—to justify coercive state power. Gun owners should recognize that the same bureaucratic creep that enabled federal overreach into medical decision-making is now being weaponized against Second Amendment rights. When government can decide you're unfit to keep and bear arms based on receiving financial services, it has crossed a line that the Constitution forbids.
What happens next in Virginia will echo across the country. If Spanberger's amendments survive—and they will unless challenged in federal court under Bruen—they establish a template for other blue-state governors to follow. The restriction on veterans requiring fiduciaries is particularly dangerous because it's exportable and it targets a sympathetic population whose sacrifice makes them reluctant to fight back. Gun owners must understand that this is not a problem that solves itself through legislative compromise or administrative correction. It requires aggressive constitutional litigation grounded in Bruen's historical test, and it requires political pressure on anyone claiming to support the Second Amendment while tolerating these schemes. The fight for Second Amendment rights isn't won through polite negotiation with governors who view gun ownership as a problem to be managed. It's won by refusing to accept any regulatory framework that strips rights from citizens through back doors.