In Virginia, there’s a whole host of gun control bills being considered. Worse, there are a lot of things we know Democrats in the Old Dominion state want to do but haven’t acted on just yet. There’s more than enough reason to believe that will change in the near future, though no one knows just how likely any of those later measures will be to pass.

However, from the moment it became clear that the state had flipped blue and that Governor Ralph Northam was taking that as a green light to advance his gun control agenda, Virginians began showing precisely why any attempted ban is doomed to fail.

As tensions mounted in Virginia ahead of the 2020 legislative session, data shows a surge in criminal background checks for gun buyers as pre-filed bills fueled fear that guns would be taken away. During the month of December, there were an estimated 73,849-gun sales, according to numbers from Virginia State Police. That includes data from gun shows. That surge was also evident in northern Virginia, there were 8,390 background checks for gun buyers ran in Fairfax County on the day of a gun show. According to the Associated Press, a review of data that goes back to 1990 shows the surge in December gun sales is only second to December 2012, when 75,120 transactions were recorded. That spike in 2012 was immediately after President Barack Obama was elected.

When gun rights are threatened, what’s the first thing Second Amendment supporters do? They buy guns. They swamp gun stores and buy up everything they can, all so they have it on hand should a ban come to pass. For some, it’s about the belief there would be a grandfather clause that would exempt their firearms and still allow them to possess the guns. For others, though, that doesn’t matter. Even if the law required them to turn the guns in, they wouldn’t. We know this because of how poorly compliance went with the NY SAFE Act. And this was in the historically liberal state of New York. Virginians are even less likely to comply than folks up that way. Gun bans are never going to work simply because most gun owners have a line in which you can push them, but no farther. There’s a point where they’re willing to stop being law-abiding citizens and embrace being outlaws. Most of us grew up on the legends of Jessie James and Billy the Kid, outlaws who became legends. We loved comic books like The Punisher and Batman, ordinary men who stepped outside of the law to see justice. We revel in the exploits of people like John Wick. Oh, we’re law-abiding citizens…until it’s no longer useful to be law-abiding citizens. These upticks in gun sales are a warning, of sorts. It’s the rat-tat-tat-tat of the rattlesnake warning you not to tread on us. It’s people buying up that which faces a ban because they know good and well that if the government is banning something, then the patriots of this great land probably need it even more. Gun bans aren’t going to work for the simple fact that we buy up everything to flood the market so they can’t work. We accumulate guns, enough to share if need be, so that the government that wants our guns today won’t be able to take our lives tomorrow without one hell of a fight on their hands. Virginian lawmakers need to understand that.