Astute Virginia gun owners anticipated terrible gun control legislation from the 2026 General Assembly. Still, some may be shocked to learn that anti-rights zealots in the Virginia Senate have advanced a bill to CONFISCATE standard capacity firearm magazines!
On January 27, the Senate Courts of Justice Committee advanced a substitute version of SB749, banning commonly-owned firearms and their magazines. This substitute version defines a “large capacity ammunition feeding device” to include standard capacity magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The bill then provides,
B. Any person who imports, sells, barters, transfers, purchases, or possesses a large capacity ammunition feeding device is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.
The legislation does not grandfather magazines possessed prior to the ban. The legislation is magazine confiscation, as current owners would be forced to dispossess themselves of their lawfully acquired property or face a Class 1 misdemeanor. A Class 1 misdemeanor is punishable by up to a year in prison and up to a $2,500 fine.
The legislation also implicates magazines “that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition.” There is no definition of “readily restored or converted to accept” provided. This vague language could be used to prohibit common magazines that employ a block to restrict an otherwise normal magazine’s capacity to comply with restrictive state laws. This would severely curtail the availability of magazines to Virginia gun owners.
Magazines that hold more than 10 rounds are the standard and undeniably “in common use”
Many of the most popular firearms in America are designed to use magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. Law enforcement officers routinely carry 15 or 17-round magazines in their duty sidearms. Law enforcement and law-abiding civilians choose these magazines for the same reasons; to best protect themselves and others from criminal violence.
In 2024, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the firearm industry trade association) released a document titled “Detachable Magazine Report: 1990-2021.”[1] This study analyzed manufacturer and sales data on magazines and magazine capacity over an extended period of time starting in 1991 (“[n]o reliable data exists prior to 1990 to estimate historic detachable magazines that may still be available for sale or in working condition”).
The NSSF study concluded that the “national standard for magazine capacity for America’s gun owners is greater than 10 rounds.” Among the other significant findings were:
- Overall, almost a billion (963 million) magazines “were produced and entered the commercial market between 1990 and 2021.” The study “does not claim all the magazines estimated in [it] are owned by Americans; these are both magazines estimated to be in circulation and made available for sale at some point from 1990 to 2021;”
- The overwhelming majority of these – approximately 74 percent, or 717 million magazines – have a capacity of eleven or more rounds, and almost half (about 46 percent) “are rifle magazines with 30+ round capacity.” More than half (about 55 percent) of total pistol magazines are detachable 11+ magazines. If the 717 million total was applied exclusively to Americans, it works out to over two “LCMs” per person based on the U.S. population in 2022, 333.3 million;
- “The consumer market totals of rifle magazines show 30+ capacity magazines, over 413 million, are over thirty times the amount available than 10 and below capacity rifle magazines, about 13 million.”
Standard capacity magazines are protected by the U.S. and the Virginia Constitutions
In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Moreover, the Court determined that the U.S. Constitution protects ownership of arms in “in common use” for lawful purposes.
In 2015, Heller decision author Justice Antonin Scalia reiterated that the Second Amendment and Heller preclude so-called “assault weapons” bans when he signed onto a dissent from the denial of certiorari in Friedman v. Highland Park. In the dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas explained,
Roughly five million Americans own AR-style semiautomatic rifles. The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting. Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.
As previously illustrated with industry data, it is undeniable that magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds are “in common use” (and the decade-old statistics Thomas cites for AR-15 owners are also now multiple times greater).
In 2022, the Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In its opinion, the Court held:
When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.”
This test would preclude bans on commonly owned semi-automatic firearms and their magazines, as the U.S. has no historical tradition of such firearm prohibitions.
Earlier this year, outgoing Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares made clear that legislation such as SB749 violates the U.S. and Virginia Constitutions. Article I Section 13 of the Virginia Constitution provides, in part,
That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;
Citing the landmark Second Amendment U.S. Supreme Court decision in Heller, Miyares pointed out that the Court made clear that the U.S. Constitution protects arms “in common use” for lawful purposes.
In describing just how common standard capacity firearm magazines are, Miyares cited the U.S. District Court decision in Duncan v. Bonta (2023) – a case which at present is up for cert at the U.S. Supreme Court. The AG pointed out, “so-called ‘large capacity magazines’ are ‘in common use.’ In fact, ‘in the realm of firearms,’ magazines holding more than ten rounds ‘are possibly the most commonly owned thing in America.’”
Referencing the Virginia Constitution, the AG noted, that the “additional clause emphasizing the importance of a population ‘trained to arms’ for the ‘defense of ... [the] state’ makes clear that arms sufficient for that purpose fall under the Constitution of Virginia's protection.” Moreover, “At the founding, citizens called for service in the militia ‘were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time’” and that, “Citizens were, in fact, expected to have such weapons or else face a fine.”
Banning standard capacity magazines does not reduce violent crime
In 1994, a 10-year federal ban on commonly owned semi-automatic firearms and magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition was enacted as part of the Clinton Crime Bill. A 1997 Department of Justice-funded study of the Clinton ban determined, “At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders.”[2]
A 2004 U.S. Department of Justice-funded follow-up study of the 1994 “assault weapons” ban determined, “Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”[3]
In January 2026, the RAND Corporation released a report that surveyed the available research on several gun control policies titled “The Science of Gun Policy.” In the study, RAND researchers sought to determine the impact of “Bans on the Sale of Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines.” Unable to find a meaningful relationship between what they termed “high-capacity magazines” and violent crime, the study concluded, “we find inconclusive evidence for the effect of high-capacity magazine bans on total and firearm homicides.”[4]
There isn’t good evidence that banning standard capacity magazines reduces mass shootings or mass shooting casualties
The 1997 U.S. Department of Justice-funded study of the federal magazine ban noted,
We were unable to detect any reduction to date in two types of gun murders that are thought to be closely associated with assault weapons, those with multiple victims in a single incident and those producing multiple bullet wounds per victim.[5]
The 2004 U.S. Department of Justice-funded study of the 1994 “assault weapons” ban found that, “relatively few attacks involve more than 10 shots fired,” and that, “it is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability to fire more than 10 shots (the current limit on magazine capacity) without reloading.” [6]
A 2016 article published in Justice Research and Policy, examined 23 mass shootings with six or more victims that occurred between 1994 and 2013 and in which the perpetrator used one or more magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds. The study determined,
In sum, in nearly all [large capacity magazine]-involved mass shootings, the time it takes to reload a detachable magazine is no greater than the average time between shots that the shooter takes anyway when not reloading. Consequently, there is no affirmative evidence that reloading detachable magazines slows mass shooters’ rates of fire, and thus no affirmative evidence that the number of victims who could escape the killers due to additional pauses in the shooting is increased by the shooter’s need to change magazines.[7]
In the aftermath of the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, Governor Tim Kaine convened a review panel to study the tragedy. The perpetrator had used several magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds in the shooting. The report stated,
The panel also considered whether the previous federal Assault Weapons Act of 1994 that banned 15-round magazines would have made a difference in the April 16 incidents. The law lapsed after 10 years, in October 2004, and had banned clips or magazines with over 10 rounds. The panel concluded that 10-round magazines that were legal would have not made much difference in the incident. Even pistols with rapid loaders could have been about as deadly in this situation.[8]
All Virginia gun owners must organize to fight magazine confiscation in the Old Dominion. In the coming days NRA will keep gun owners apprised of the latest developments in Richmond and the actions necessary to defend the right to keep and bear arms.
[1] Detachable Magazine Report: 1990-2021, National Shooting Sports Foundation, April 12, 2024.
[2] Jeffrey A. Roth, Christopher S. Koper, Impact Evaluation of the Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994, Urban Institute, March 13, 1997.
[3] Christopher S. Koper, An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Report to the National Institute of Justice, June 2004.
[4] The Science of Gun Policy: A Critical Synthesis of Research Evidence on the Effects of Gun Policies in the United States, RAND, January 2026,
[5] Roth and Koper, 1997.
[6] Koper, 2004.
[7] Gary Kleck, Large-Capacity Magazines and the Casualty Counts in Mass Shootings: The Plausibility of Linkages, Justice Research and Policy, 2016, Vol. 17(1) 28-47.
[8] Mass Shootings at Virginia Tech April 16, 2007: Report of the Review Panel Presented to Governor Kaine, Commonwealth of Virginia, August, 2007.
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