When Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a new assault weapons ban in Virginia last month, it got almost zero national news coverage. Yet it amounted to an important milestone: It marked the first time in U.S. history that such a gun control measure was passed into law by any state government in the American South.
So it’s sadly fitting that passage of this law has been greeted by what you might call its very own nullification movement.
That’s right: In a brewing situation that has gone largely overlooked, a number of county-based prosecutors in red areas of Virginia are publicly declaring that they will not enforce the new ban on assault-style weapons. This movement is taking shape as a direct, openly confrontational challenge to the authority of Spanberger and the Virginia legislature that passed the measure—and it only appears to be growing.
“It is an abdication by MAGA elected officials of their duty to enforce the law,” State Delegate Dan Helmer, a Democrat who represents a northern Virginia district and co-sponsored the measure, tells me. The law bans the sale, purchase, and manufacture of many military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines of more than 15 rounds, among other things.
At least nine of Virginia’s “commonwealth attorneys”—who are elected county-wide to serve as chief law enforcement officers —have now issued statements declaring that they don’t intend to uphold the new law. All the counties in question voted for Donald Trump in 2024 by lopsided margins—some by more than 40 or 50 points—and many are deeply rural.
“After careful review of the legislation and existing Supreme Court precedent, I find the assault weapons ban signed by the Governor unconstitutional—and as a result, unenforceable,” Phillip Blevins, the commonwealth attorney for Smyth County, recently announced. Smyth, a rural area in the Appalachian southwestern corner of Virginia, backed Trump by 60 points.
The stakes here are considerable. The law already faces legal challenges from gun rights groups. The groups and these prosecutors alike argue that assault-style rifles are in common use—and that banning them steps outside the nation’s historic traditions of firearm regulations—which under Supreme Court precedent, they say, renders Virginia’s law unconstitutional.
But the prosecutors are taking this further. They appear to be suggesting they won’t enforce the law beginning the moment it takes effect on July 1, even if the courts haven’t weighed in by then (while vowing to still prosecute violent crimes). Though some of them describe this as exercising prosecutorial discretion, it seems to mean something more: that as a general matter, people who buy or sell these weapons illegally may simply not face prosecution.
Indeed, some of the prosecutors are even in effect arguing that the sovereignty of the people within these counties overrules the authority of the state legislature—which is also duly elected—and relieves them of any obligation to enforce its new gun-control law. Several sheriffs in the same counties have also declared their refusal to enforce it.
So now what? Virginia District Attorney Jay Jones, a Democrat, is warning these prosecutors that they must enforce the new measure. “Commonwealth’s Attorneys are elected to enforce our laws, which is what we expect them to do when these laws take effect on July 1,” Jones said in an emailed statement. But his office hasn’t said whether it’s examining actions it might take against them or what actions, if any, are available.
Yet this appears unlikely to go away and seems all-but-certain to come to a head. Indeed, Helmer, the delegate from Northern Virginia, argues that this movement is not mere posturing—it amounts to a direct challenge to state legislative authority.
“The context is a culture of lawlessness that pervades the Republican Party under Trump, and it’s extending down to Republican elected officials who feel empowered to ignore the law,” Helmer told me. “Your duty if you’re a commonweath attorney or a sheriff is to enforce the law, and if you’re not willing to do that, you should resign.”
Helmer also pointed to the state’s recent history of high-profile gun killings. “The largest mass murders in U.S. history—and also in Virginia history—have been committed either with assault weapons, or high-capacity magazines, or both,” Helmer, who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, said. If future purchases go unprosecuted, he argued, it could lead to more “mass killing in our communities.”
Research suggests this is plausible. And efforts to act on assault-style weapons are aimed at curbing a whole range of violent crimes, not just mass shootings.
Spanberger has yet to comment on the growing rebellion. But it creates an awkward situation for her. In coming weeks, she is expected to preside over a signing ceremony for the law. If nearly a dozen county prosecutors—and perhaps more by then—are simultaneously vowing not to enforce it, that seems to challenge her in a fairly brazen way.
After all, Spanberger was elected statewide less than a year ago by a whopping 15-point margin, outperforming Kamala Harris’s 2024 margin there by nine points. Though Spanberger lost virtually all the red counties that are now rebelling against her law, she outperformed Harris in just about all of them, making inroads in very tough political territory.
In a sense, Virginia is experiencing something you might call “de-south-ification.” The state stretches from the growing, highly diverse, very populous suburbs in the north—which abut the urban areas of Washington, DC—down to diversifying Richmond in the southeast, even as its heavily rural southwestern tip reaches deep into Appalachia.
Spanberger’s stratospheric margins in the heavily populated northern suburbs, combined with her overperformances in deep red areas, suggest the state’s MAGA and rural strongholds continue to shrink in clout (though the election of former GOP governor Glenn Youngkin slowed this process). That those areas are resisting enforcement of the first assault-style weapons ban in the South neatly captures the bigger transitions underway.
It’s notable that something similar is happening in North Carolina and even to some degree in Georgia. In North Carolina—the southern neighbor of Virginia—the eastern, urbanized, diverse areas are gaining in demographic clout over its rural areas, some of which also stretch deep into Appalachia. No question, North Carolina is well behind Virginia in this process. And Georgia is still extremely tough territory for Democrats.
But as Ron Brownstein details, the basic story connecting all these states—and even to some degree Texas—is that their combination of diversification and urbanization continues to nudge them in a Democratic direction. Trump’s successes—his 2024 inroads with nonwhites and blunting of Democratic margins in diverse, populous strongholds—has led many to doubt that demographic change necessarily favors Democrats. But in some important respects demographics does continue to help Democrats, though it’s obviously insufficient on its own.
Spanberger’s overwhelming victory, the shrinking of MAGA clout in Virginia, and the rearguard resistance to enforcing her gun control law in deep red areas—amounting to a MAGA nullification movement of sorts—neatly capture all these deep tensions. The big outstanding question is: How will Spanberger navigate them?
