David Rohwer of Austin holds his assault rifle during an open carry firearm rally on the sidelines of the annual National Rifle Association meeting in Dallas, Texas, May 5, 2018. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

As Stephen Gutowski notes at the Free Beacon, there’s a truly radical proposal lurking in the Virginia governor’s push for gun control. From a press release:

Delegate Kathy Tran and Senator Adam Ebbin will patron legislation to ban the sale, purchase, possession, and transport of assault firearms in the Commonwealth. The bill also modifies the definition of assault firearm to any firearm that is equipped with a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

Limiting magazine size to ten rounds is nothing new; it was federal law for a decade. But this would ban the possession and transport of such magazines, not just their sale. In other words, everyone who legally purchased one of these magazines in the past — and they come standard with many handguns, including the immensely popular Glock 17 — would apparently be in violation of the law unless they turned them in.

Republicans narrowly control both houses of the Virginia legislature, so I doubt anything this extreme will make it through. But the party really has to get its act together in this state, at both the macro and micro levels, if it wants to stave off much more of this nonsense going forward.

UPDATE: Gutowski now has legislative language that’s just as extreme as the press release suggested.