Virginia’s background check law for private handgun sales is officially dead, and it took five years of courtroom trench warfare to get there.
According to attorney Rachel Moss of Attorneys On Retainer, the final order in Wilson v. Hanley has now been issued – and the statute that mandated universal background checks for gun sales in Virginia has been struck down.
It’s not the clean, big-picture Second Amendment ruling many people hoped for.
But it is a major win, and it exposes some serious problems with the way the law treated young adults.
A Five-Year Fight Over Private Sales
Moss explains that Wilson v. Hanley has been grinding through the courts since 2020, challenging Virginia Code § 18.2-308.2:5 – the law that required background checks for all firearm sales, including private transactions.
Since then, the legal landscape has shifted dramatically.
Moss points out that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision changed how courts analyze Second Amendment cases, and the later Rahimi ruling added even more complexity.
The judge in Wilson acknowledged those big cases, Moss says, but ultimately chose a narrower path.
Instead of deciding whether background checks for private handgun sales are constitutional under Bruen, the court focused on how the Virginia statute actually operated in the real world.
And that’s where everything came apart.
How Virginia’s Background Check Law Worked
Moss carefully walks through the text of the statute.
The law said that no one could sell a firearm for money, goods, services, or anything of value unless a licensed dealer first ran a background check and got a “proceed” response from the State Police system.
In plain English, every sale – including a private sale between two ordinary Virginians – had to be funneled through a gun dealer and the background check system.
The statute’s goal, Moss notes, was crystal clear: lawmakers wanted every buyer to go through a background check, without carving out special classes of people.
Whether you think that goal is wise or not, Moss says, that was the legislative intent.
But once the law collided with how federal background checks work for young adults, the whole thing became unconstitutional as applied.
Why 18- to 20-Year-Olds Were at the Center
The key group in the case, Moss explains, was 18- to 20-year-olds.
Under federal practice, when the standard national background check system runs a handgun purchase for someone in that age range, the transaction is automatically denied.
Moss says that means an 18-, 19-, or 20-year-old trying to buy a handgun in Virginia would hit a brick wall every time the required background check was run.
Because the state law forced every sale through that system, young adults were effectively banned from purchasing handguns – from anyone, in any ordinary way.
The court saw that as a serious constitutional problem.
Moss notes that the judge had actually recognized this early on, issuing an injunction prohibiting enforcement of the law against 18- to 20-year-olds while the case was still being litigated.
So the writing was already on the wall.
The Three-Prong Test That Sank the Statute
Moss says the court turned to a three-part test from a case she calls the Iote decision, which deals with what courts should do when part of a statute is unconstitutional “as applied” to a certain group.
Under that test, the court first asks: can we fix the problem by severing only the offending part without destroying the broader law?
Here, Moss explains, the judge concluded that wouldn’t work.
If the law were “fixed” so that 18- to 20-year-olds didn’t need background checks, but everyone 21 and older still did, the result would be absurd and completely out of line with the legislature’s original intent to require checks for everyone.
The second prong asks whether the court can simply rewrite the statute in some minimal way to make it constitutional.
Moss says the judge rejected that too, stressing that courts are not supposed to act like mini-legislatures.
Tweaking this law enough to fix the age problem would require major surgery, and the judge said that would cross the line from interpretation into policymaking.
The third prong is whether any remedy the court chooses would still respect legislative intent.
Moss points out that the judge decided lawmakers were not trying to create arbitrary age discrimination or strip young adults of their rights.
So the court couldn’t honestly pretend the General Assembly meant to exempt 18- to 20-year-olds while still hammering everyone else.
With all three prongs pointing the same direction, Moss says, the court concluded there was really only one option left.
The entire act had to go.
What the Final Order Actually Does
Moss explains that back in October 2025, the judge issued an opinion letter telling both sides how he intended to rule and asking the parties to submit proposed orders.
That letter signaled the outcome, but it wasn’t binding yet.
Now, she says, the final order has officially been signed.
According to Moss, the court made several big moves in that order:
First, it held that Virginia’s background check act is unconstitutional as applied to adults aged 18 to 20.
Second, because the statute couldn’t be severed or rewritten in a way that made sense, the judge struck down the act in its entirety.
Third, Moss notes, the court enjoined Virginia law enforcement from enforcing the act going forward – this isn’t just a polite suggestion, it’s binding.
Fourth, all temporary injunctions and earlier stopgap measures are now dissolved, replaced by this permanent ruling.
The state didn’t like the proposed order the plaintiffs drafted, Moss says, but the judge adopted it anyway with only minor edits.
From a practical standpoint, that means Virginia’s background check mandate for private firearm sales is now off the books.
A Win – With a Big Asterisk
Moss calls this a “big win” for the Second Amendment community in Virginia, and it plainly is.
A law that effectively blocked young adults from buying handguns – while pretending to treat everyone equally – has been tossed as unconstitutional.
The ruling also sends a strong signal that courts are watching how “universal” background check laws actually function in practice, not just what they say on paper.
But as Moss is quick to point out, this victory comes with a major caveat.
The judge did not decide the broader question everyone really wanted answered: are background checks for private sales themselves unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and Bruen?
The court specifically said it was not reaching that issue.
Instead, it treated this strictly as an as-applied challenge to the way the law operated on 18- to 20-year-olds.
In other words, the door is wide open for the Virginia legislature to come back with a “cleaner” version of the same idea.
What Comes Next for Virginia Gun Owners
Moss believes it is “very possible” that Virginia lawmakers will try again.
They could propose a new background check statute with different mechanics, or one that tries harder to avoid the automatic denial trap for young adults.
If they do, she expects more litigation – maybe even years of it.
From a gun rights perspective, that’s both encouraging and frustrating.
Encouraging, because this case proves that bad laws can be beaten, and that courts are willing to strike down statutes that quietly erase the rights of entire age groups.
Frustrating, because the core constitutional question about private-sale background checks still hasn’t been answered, even five years after Wilson v. Hanley began.
My own view is that this case highlights two huge realities.
First, that “universal background check” schemes can have hidden, severe consequences for young adults who are otherwise legal adults under the law — especially when those schemes piggyback on federal systems that aren’t designed for them.
Second, that courts are often more comfortable fixing obvious unfairness to a narrow group than handing down sweeping rulings that reshape the entire gun control framework in one shot.
For now, Virginia gun owners – especially those aged 18 to 20 – have a lot more breathing room than they did before this ruling.
But as Moss warns, this isn’t the end of the story.
It’s the end of one bad law, and the opening chapter in whatever the General Assembly decides to do next.
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The article Virginia gun law ruled unconstitutional after five years of court fights first appeared on Survival World.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, John developed a love for the great outdoors early on. With years of experience as a wilderness guide, he’s navigated rugged terrains and unpredictable weather patterns. John is also an avid hunter and fisherman who believes in sustainable living. His focus on practical survival skills, from building shelters to purifying water, reflects his passion for preparedness. When he’s not out in the wild, you can find him sharing his knowledge through writing, hoping to inspire others to embrace self-reliance.
