Having campaigned in 2019 on promises to pass gun-control laws, Virginia Democrats are moving forward with legislation to “limit handgun purchases to once a month, ban military-style weapons and silencers, allow localities to ban guns in public spaces and enact ‘red flag’ laws so authorities can temporarily seize weapons.”
Although gun-control measures are favored in the cities and suburbs where most of the state’s residents live, nearly all of Virginia’s counties have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries.” In these counties, local officials have vowed to ignore new restrictions on guns on the grounds that they are unconstitutional (assuming for themselves the power of the judiciary).
On Jan. 14, the West Virginia House of Delegates passed a resolution urging those counties in Virginia to abandon the Old Dominion and join their state, just as the founders of West Virginia did during the Civil War. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. reiterated the message Tuesday during a news conference with Gov. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.).
However, this symbolic resolution of support for Virginia’s counties misinterprets history. West Virginia’s founders launched their own state government to challenge a small but powerful governing elite in Virginia. Their project was to expand democratic participation and challenge the authority of those who held the state hostage to minority interests. Today, it is the gun-control reformers, not the Second Amendment sanctuaries, that are following in the tradition of challenging powerful entrenched interests like the gun lobby to make the voice of the people heard.
Since 1830, western grievances had dominated Virginia politics. At three state constitutional conventions, western advocates mostly failed to eliminate special privileges enjoyed by slaveholders, largely concentrated in eastern Virginia. These advocates, later the founders of West Virginia, were not anti-slavery. They were anti-slaveholder. They thought that government in Virginia was undemocratic, serving eastern slaveholders’ special interests over those of the citizenry.
And they were right that slaveholders held a position of tremendous economic and political power. They benefited from a provision in the state Constitution that taxed slave property at a fraction of market value.
In a form of gerrymandering, Virginia’s legislature was also apportioned to suit slaveholders. Operating under the “mixed basis,” Virginia’s legislative districts were apportioned according to a ratio of white citizens and the value of all property they held. Factoring in property meant that eastern slaveholders, the wealthiest people in the state, received extra representation in the state legislature. A western delegate might represent 1,000 citizens, on average poorer and non-slaveholding, whereas an eastern delegate might represent just 500 citizens by virtue of their immense property of enslaved people. In a literal sense, slaveholders’ wealth earned them a more powerful vote.