A Marine veteran serving as the top prosecutor in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, has told his county sheriff he will not enforce Governor Abigail Spanberger’s new ban on semiautomatic firearms, calling the law “unconstitutional and cannot be lawfully enforced.”
Ryan Mehaffey, the Commonwealth Attorney for Spotsylvania County, laid out his position in a letter to the local sheriff, a direct challenge to the Democratic governor’s signature gun-control measure, which Spanberger signed in mid-May. The ban targets semiautomatic rifles, certain shotguns, certain semiautomatic centerfire pistols, and restricts large-capacity magazines.
Mehaffey isn’t just a lawyer reading case law. He’s a former Marine, and he made clear that his constitutional objection runs deeper than legal strategy. His refusal to prosecute under the new statute means that in at least one Virginia jurisdiction, the ban is effectively dead on arrival.
Spanberger’s law makes it a Class 1 misdemeanor to import, sell, purchase, or transfer a prohibited firearm as defined by the statute. Fox News reported that the ban prohibits future sales of semiautomatic rifles, pistols, shotguns, and magazines holding more than 15 rounds, with an effective date in July 2025.
Mehaffey’s letter to the Spotsylvania County Sheriff frames the issue in terms the Founders would recognize. In his view, the constitutional test is straightforward.
As Breitbart News reported, Mehaffey stated:
“Our founders were careful to make sure when they drafted our founding document, that the ultimate right of the people was preserved to defend themselves and to defend their community…. So, the linchpin of the constitutional analysis is going to be does this instrument have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a regulated militia.”
That framing tracks the logic of the Supreme Court’s recent Second Amendment jurisprudence, which has moved decisively toward text-and-history analysis. Mehaffey’s argument is that semiautomatic firearms plainly satisfy the militia-relationship test, and that a ban on their sale and transfer cannot survive constitutional scrutiny.
Mehaffey isn’t standing alone. Fox News reported that Smyth County Commonwealth’s Attorney Phillip Blevins, an Air Force veteran, has also refused to enforce the ban. Multiple prosecutors and gun-rights organizations are taking legal action against the law, arguing it violates Second Amendment protections and conflicts with Virginia’s own constitutional traditions.
The pattern is worth watching. When local prosecutors decline to enforce a state law on constitutional grounds, it creates a patchwork of enforcement that exposes the law’s political fragility. Spanberger may have the votes in Richmond, but she doesn’t have the willing hands in the courthouses that would actually bring charges.
Virginia has a long tradition of local resistance to gun-control mandates from the state capital. During the previous Democratic trifecta under Governor Ralph Northam, dozens of Virginia counties and cities declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries. Mehaffey’s letter is a sharper version of the same impulse, a prosecutor with charging authority saying, in writing, that he considers the law unconstitutional and will not use his office to enforce it.
Spanberger signed the semiautomatic firearms ban in mid-May, moving quickly to deliver on a campaign promise to gun-control advocates. The law immediately drew legal challenges. As we reported, Spanberger’s signing set up an immediate legal clash with the NRA and the Department of Justice, both of which have signaled opposition to state-level bans that conflict with federal constitutional protections.
The governor’s office has not publicly responded to Mehaffey’s letter, at least not in any statement captured in current reporting. That silence may be strategic, or it may reflect the difficulty of forcing a locally elected prosecutor to bring charges he considers unconstitutional.
Mehaffey also invoked both the U.S. Constitution and what he described as its analog in the Virginia Constitution. “The Second Amendment is the supreme law of the land, both in the U.S. Constitution and the analog in the Virginia Constitution,” he said, according to Fox News. That dual-track argument matters because it gives defenders of gun rights two independent constitutional bases for challenge, one federal, one state.
Mehaffey’s stand arrives at a moment when the legal terrain is shifting under gun-control advocates’ feet. The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen required courts to evaluate firearms regulations against the nation’s historical tradition of regulation, not under the old interest-balancing tests that gave legislatures wide latitude. Since Bruen, federal courts have struck down or enjoined multiple firearms restrictions that would have survived under the prior framework.
The Trump Justice Department’s recent decision to drop its defense of a Biden-era ATF gun rule after a court struck it down as unconstitutional reflects the same legal current. Federal enforcement priorities have shifted, and state-level bans now face skepticism from both the courts and the executive branch.
Virginia’s ban will almost certainly face a full constitutional challenge in court. The question is whether it can survive the Bruen framework. Semiautomatic firearms are among the most commonly owned weapons in the country. Banning their sale and transfer is a heavy lift under any historical-tradition test, and prosecutors like Mehaffey are betting the courts will agree.
The broader trend of courts striking down government actions as unconstitutional, across multiple areas of law, suggests that the judiciary is less willing to defer to legislative overreach than it was a decade ago. Gun-control advocates who once counted on judicial deference are finding that the ground has moved.
Several open questions remain. No reporting has yet captured a response from the Spotsylvania County Sheriff, who received Mehaffey’s letter and whose deputies would be the ones making arrests under the new law. Without a willing prosecutor, those arrests would lead nowhere, a reality that gives the sheriff little incentive to act.
It is also unclear how many other Virginia prosecutors may follow Mehaffey and Blevins in refusing enforcement. Virginia has 120 independent Commonwealth Attorneys, each elected locally. If a critical mass declines to prosecute, the ban becomes unenforceable across large parts of the state even before a court rules on its constitutionality.
Spanberger’s political calculation was that signing the ban would energize her base and deliver a policy win. But a law that prosecutors won’t enforce and courts may strike down is not a win. It is a press release with a signature line.
The governor moved fast. The Constitution moves faster.
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