The gun confiscation lobby just got dealt a devastating blow in Virginia.
On October 16, 2025, a Virginia Circuit Court struck down the state’s so-called “universal background check” law, exposing what gun owners have known all along: these laws have nothing to do with safety — they’re about registration, control, and eventually, confiscation.
The ruling in Wilson v. Hanley is a massive win for freedom.
The court saw right through Virginia’s unconstitutional scheme that forced private citizens to run government background checks through the federal NICS system just to sell or transfer a handgun.
The decision found that the law effectively banned 18- to 20-year-olds from buying handguns, even though state law explicitly allows them to own one.
In other words — the law didn’t stop criminals. It just stopped good people from exercising their God-given rights.
Universal Background Checks = Gun Registration
The media calls them “common sense.” Bureaucrats call them “universal background checks.” But gun owners know exactly what they are: gun registration schemes.
Every time you fill out an ATF Form 4473 at a gun dealer, your information — your name, address, and the firearm’s details — ends up in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
The federal government may claim it doesn’t keep a registry, but even the Government Accountability Office admits the FBI has amassed nearly one billion records.
And history has proven — over and over again — that registration is always the first step toward confiscation.
Registration Always Leads to Confiscation
Here’s the cold, hard truth — every major gun-confiscating regime started with registration.
- Weimar Germany (1919–1938): Registration under the Weimar Republic gave Hitler’s Nazis a ready-made list for confiscation.
- Soviet Union (1920s–1940s): Lenin and Stalin required gun registration, then used it to disarm “counter-revolutionaries.”
- United Kingdom (1920–1997): Britain’s Firearms Act began registration, leading to near-total handgun confiscation by the 1990s.
- Australia (1996): A mandatory registry enabled mass confiscation after the Port Arthur massacre.
- Canada (1995–2022): Canada’s long-gun registry paved the way for sweeping “assault weapon” bans and forced turn-ins.
- New Zealand (2019–2021): Registration and mandatory reporting followed immediately by mass confiscation.
Every single time, governments swore “no one’s coming for your guns.” Every single time, they lied.
Texas Gun Rights Fights Back — Without Compromise
That’s why Texas Gun Rights (TXGR) has opposed every single attempt to expand the Brady-NICS gun ban registry — including efforts right here in Texas.
In 2023, the Texas Legislature codified language from the Biden–Cornyn “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” (BSCA) into state law — dumping the names of nonviolent minors into the federal gun ban database.
Let that sink in: teenagers with no criminal record, no violence, and no due process are being flagged in a federal gun control database.
This isn’t “public safety.” It’s a slow-motion assault on the next generation of gun owners.
And NICS isn’t even accurate. According to FBI data, more than 90% of initial NICS denials are false positives — law-abiding Americans wrongly flagged as criminals.
These people are denied their rights, their dignity, and their due process — all because of a bloated, bureaucratic database that’s proven itself to be unconstitutional in both purpose and practice.
The ATF’s “Engaged in the Business” Rule: A Backdoor Registry
That’s why Texas Gun Rights also filed a hard-hitting amicus brief challenging the ATF’s outrageous new rule redefining what it means to be “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.
That rule — written by unelected anti-gun bureaucrats — is a de facto universal background check regulation. It would force countless private gun owners to register as FFLs or face felony prosecution for selling a gun to a friend, family member, or neighbor.
In reality, it’s universal registration by executive order.
NICS Must Be Abolished
As Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt put it bluntly:
“Every gun registry — whether it’s called NICS, BSCA, or universal background checks — is just the government’s tool to track, target, and eventually confiscate firearms from law-abiding Americans. Texas Gun Rights will never stop fighting against gun registration until the Brady-NICS system is completely abolished.”
Here’s the kicker: NICS is not some ancient, established safeguard. It’s barely older than the internet.
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act created the NICS system in 1993, and it went into effect in 1998 — meaning for over 200 years of American history, there was no such thing as a federal background check or gun registry.
If Bruen teaches us anything, it’s that modern gun laws must have a historical analogue consistent with America’s founding traditions. There is none for NICS. The Founders would have laughed at the idea of asking a king’s permission to buy a musket.
So if challenged properly, the entire Brady-NICS system may be unconstitutional under Bruen’s test.
And that’s exactly the kind of fight Texas Gun Rights is preparing for.
Freedom Wins When Gun Owners Stand Up
The Virginia ruling proves what happens when gun owners fight back. Universal background checks aren’t about “closing loopholes” — they’re about tracking every gun and every gun owner.
And as history shows, that story never ends well.
Texas Gun Rights stands shoulder to shoulder with every patriot fighting to dismantle the unconstitutional Brady-NICS registry — and we will not stop until every gun registry in America is abolished, every bureaucrat’s database deleted, and every law-abiding Texan free again to buy, sell, and own firearms without government permission.
Because freedom isn’t negotiable. And compromise is how we lose it.
