Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell (D) defended “assault weapons” ban legislation Monday, referencing a “really big, big pistol… with a telescope on it.”
The legislation being discussed was SB 749, which has now passed the Virginia legislature and is headed to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s (D) desk.
Democrats passed the bill, in part, by including a grandfather clause that allows Virginians to keep banned firearms beyond the July 1, 2026, effective date of SB 749. However, the bill makes it illegal for them to sell or transfer the guns or to buy new ones.
It even bans the possession of said guns unless the firearm was in the possession of the person prior to July 1, 2026.
Surovell seized on the grandfather clause aspect of the ban as he spoke in support of it, saying: “If you have an assault rifle, you can keep it. If you have an assault pistol, …one of these pistols with a silencer on it and a pistol grip in the front, a really big, big pistol, if you want to have one with a telescope on it or lasers or whatever you want, that’s okay, you just can’t buy a new one and you can’t sell it to anybody.”
Survovell defended the gun ban by claiming that other things, “like flame throwers,” are already banned in America.
(Surovell did not provide any substantiation of his claim that flamethrowers are banned nor did he address the fact that they are readily available at retailers around the country.)
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.