As the Virginia Legislature’s starting date rapidly approaches, anti-gunners are already preparing to axe your gun rights by firing off new bills during the bill pre-filing period.
HB 217 is especially damaging, and it aims to do a sweeping number of infringements on your rights if passed. The bill:
Bans the importation, sale, manufacture, purchase, and transfer of a wide range of commonly owned semi-automatic rifles, pistols, and shotguns by classifying them as “assault firearms” based on features such as pistol grips, threaded barrels, folding or adjustable stocks, muzzle devices, or the ability to accept detachable magazines.
Targets specifically semi-automatic pistols and shotguns commonly used for lawful purposes, including pistols with threaded barrels and semi-automatic shotguns with detachable magazines or fixed magazine capacities exceeding seven rounds.
Bans the sale and transfer of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds if manufactured on or after July 1, 2026, outlawing standard-capacity magazines that are factory-issued with many popular firearms.
Makes the importation, sale, manufacture, purchase, or transfer of a prohibited firearm a Class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.
Imposes a three-year prohibition on possessing, purchasing, or transporting any firearm for anyone convicted under the bill, expanding firearm prohibitions through misdemeanor offenses.
Criminalizes possession, purchase, or transport of an “assault firearm” by anyone under the age of 21, even when the firearm was lawfully owned and manufactured before the ban date.
Authorizes seizure and forfeiture of firearms, magazines, and accessories involved in violations, even when the underlying offense is a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
Expands concealed handgun permit disqualifications by tying permit eligibility to the new “assault firearm” misdemeanor convictions.
In addition, HB207 could obliterate the gains we made on the federal level by convincing Congress to lower the National Firearms Act tax on suppressors from $200 to $0 thanks to your persistence and advocacy. HB207 hopes to:
Impose a new $500 Virginia tax on suppressors, in addition to the existing federal tax and registration requirements.
To recap, the Virginia Legislature has already also introduced SB 27 which holds manufacturers and dealers liable and susceptible to potentially multimillion dollar lawsuits for things out of their control and SB 38, seeks to grow the already stringent regulations regarding the confiscation or transfer of firearms from a “prohibited person.”
How can we fight back against these egregious policies that threaten our inalienable Second Amendment rights? There are currently two essential and immediate options that we need your help with.
1. Use the form at the top of this post to contact your state delegate and senator, and tell them that you oppose HB 217, HB 207, SB 27, and SB 38 for the reasons outlined above. We need to flood Richmond politicians with calls and emails to make it clear that Virginians will not tolerate and stand by when our constitutional rights are under attack.
2. Join us for the The Virginia Citizens Defense League Lobby Day on January 19, 2026. VCDL’s lobby day is an opportunity for our message to be heard and amplified; with a massive attendance of gun owners at the state capitol, we can make a serious impact on how these bills perform. Click here to learn more
Written over 3,000 years ago, the ancient adage “Iron sharpens iron” is traditionally attributed to King Solomon via the Book of Proverbs. (Proverbs 27:17)
The imagery reflects ancient blacksmithing practices where one iron tool was used to file, hone, or carve an edge on another. In traditional wisdom, it symbolizes mutual improvement, constructive challenge and character development through community.
Steve Tarani breaks down real-world defensive tactics that actually work when things go sideways.
Today, elite athletes, shooters, martial artists and warfighters use this same concept to make themselves better prepared for engagement with others. When applied to self-defense, there are three such pieces of iron that can be used in developing your skills to survive a violent physical altercation. What are these three and how can you use them to both sharpen your skills and strengthen your resolve?
The First
The first piece of iron is discipline, where you challenge yourself. Some people say follow your passion; others say find your motivation. Even if you can somehow muster both, when passion eventually wanes, and motivation dissipates, all that remains is discipline. In the long run, long after emotions fade, discipline will carry you the distance.
Discipline isn’t something you’re born with; it’s something you earn through consistent, intentional action. Its potential is available to all of us, but it is made manifest by those completing two halves.
Learning self-defense skills isn’t about looking cool — it’s about building competence under pressure.
In shooting and defensive tactics, discipline begins with a clear purpose: a goal strong enough to push you forward when motivation evaporates. From there, it’s forged through repetition. Showing up to practice, completing each drill with intent, and maintaining the fundamentals even when no one is watching gradually hard-wires discipline into behavior. Over time, these daily choices turn into personal habits. What once required effort becomes unconscious competence.
The other half of discipline comes from environment and accountability.
Effective personal protection training requires more than just memorizing techniques. It demands disciplined practice, honest feedback, and the willingness to fail forward.
Training partners, coaches, and teammates create pressure and support that sharpen your performance. They leverage mistakes, raise expectations, and challenge you to raise the bar. Through this process, you learn to become comfortable being uncomfortable and act with purpose instead of emotion. Discipline fully develops when you repeatedly choose the long-term result over short-term gratification, until that choice becomes part of who you are.
The Next Step
Next is being challenged by others. Placing yourself in a competitive environment will expose the gaps you didn’t know you had. Whether it’s sparring rounds, timed drills on the range, rolling on the mat, or pressure-based scenario work, competition forces you to confront reality. You learn very quickly what holds up under stress and what falls apart the moment adrenaline or uncertainty shows up.
When adrenaline hits, and your plan falls apart, your body defaults to what you’ve drilled a thousand times. That’s why iron sharpens iron matters — you need training partners who won’t let you get sloppy with the fundamentals.
Other people, especially those who are more skilled and experienced, become the second piece of iron. Their presence pushes you to elevate your performance, tighten your fundamentals, and lose the excuses. When you face someone who gives you honest resistance, you sharpen not only your technique but your mental game, adapting in real time and discovering a higher gear you didn’t know you had.
This type of challenge is not about ego; it’s about exposure and growth. Controlled pressure reveals weaknesses so you can address them before they become liabilities in real-world conditions.
When you’ve hammered the rounds with people who can push you to your limits, when you’ve performed under watchful eyes or against the clock, you develop a calmness that only earned experience can create.
You learn to stay composed, think clearly, and execute under pressure because you’ve already faced environments that demanded it. Confidence is the sharpening effect of this second iron: the honest challenge of others who make you better by refusing to go easy on you.
Where It Counts
The third piece of iron is adversity itself: the unexpected, the uncomfortable, and the uncontrollable. While discipline builds your foundation and other people refine your skill, real adversity is what hardens you. This includes training sessions where everything feels off, drills you fail repeatedly, physical fatigue that tests your will, or situations where stress and uncertainty overwhelm your plan “A”.
Most people think self-defense skills are about winning fights. Wrong. They’re about surviving chaos long enough to get home, and that requires facing uncomfortable truths about your actual capabilities.
Most people tend to avoid adversity, but in self-defense and performance shooting, adversity is the most legit instructor you’ll ever have. When things do not go your way, when the environment is chaotic or stacked against you, that struggle forces adaptation. It teaches resilience, problem-solving under duress and the ability to regain composure when the situation is anything but comfortable.
Discipline beats motivation every single time because motivation disappears the second things get hard. Building reliable defensive responses means showing up consistently.
Adversity sharpens you by stripping away what doesn’t work. Under stress, you can’t BS your way through or negotiate with reality. You must respond. You discover your real thresholds, your real habits, and your real mental focus.
Over time, facing adversity builds a deep, internal confidence: not the kind based on perfect conditions, but the kind rooted in having survived and adapted to imperfect ones. In self-defense, this matters more than any drill or trophy.
Conclusion
Violence is chaotic, unfair, and unfolds fast. The person who has trained through adversity, who has stumbled, adjusted, and kept moving, is the person far more likely to stay in the fight when it counts. This final piece of iron ensures that when life hits back, you don’t break; you respond with resilience and skill.
Real self-defense skills aren’t flashy techniques you see in movies. They’re unglamorous, repeatable actions that work when you’re exhausted, scared, and operating on pure instinct.
The ancient Spartans viewed adversity as a gift from the gods. Hardship was seen as the raw material from which strength and courage were shaped. They believed that only through struggle could a warrior discover their true limits and expand them. Comfort softened a person; adversity revealed them. Every challenge, every setback, every grueling test was considered an opportunity to strip away weakness and build a level of resilience that couldn’t be taught any other way. It runs parallel to the U.S.M.C. mantra, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
To our ancestors, iron sharpening iron wasn’t something to endure reluctantly, but a divine gift to willingly embrace. It was the crucible that burned away hesitation and fear, leaving behind the disciplined, skilled and unshakeable. It was what made you worthy of the shield you carried and the trust of those you protected.
Gunshot wounds can be deceiving. There is frequently minimal
evidence on the outside to attest to the mischief lurking within.
Our hero was north of 400 pounds. In the place where I learned my trade, we’d call that four Mississippi Units. He was a big boy but not the biggest I had seen … not by a long shot.
The man waddled into the emergency room under his own steam. At first brush, he honestly seemed unhurt. Then, he turned around and showed me his shirt. The right aspect of his back over his shoulder blade was soaked with blood. I got him to take his shirt off, put some pressure on the wound, and got about the business of figuring this all out. Along the way, he told me his story.
Just Minding My Own Business …
They all had the same tale or some variation thereon.
“There I was, sitting on the front porch reading the Bible to my blind grandmother when Some Dude jumped out of the bushes and busted a cap on me. He was wearing a hoodie, so I couldn’t see his face, but he was packing a GLOCK 9.”
Repeat as necessary.
If the cops could apprehend Mr. Dude, the crime rate in our little corner of hell would plummet precipitously.
In this case, the guy was supposedly just driving along when he pulled up to a stoplight and was accosted by a total stranger. Now, I was born at night, but not last night. Were I to hazard a bit of conjecture, I’d guess that he took part in a drug deal gone bad. That’s what got most of them.
Anyway, the two men exchanged words, and things escalated. Then, my new buddy hit the gas. He had enough sense not to hang around amidst such fulminant percolating drama. His roadside buddy decided to seal the deal with a single 9mm Parabellum ball round.
Possession of a genuine cop gun like this police-issue GLOCK 22 will make you a rockstar among serious criminals.
Shop Talk
Talking guns with shot-up thugs was actually one of the bright spots of my time in an urban ER. They were all rank amateurs, but they spoke the language to a degree. Hi-Points were ubiquitous, and GLOCKs marked the Thug of Distinction.
A GLOCK that had been credibly taken from a cop was enough to fill one’s dance ticket any place two or more criminals formally gathered. I only heard of that once. As this was in the early aughts, the criminals in my hood had not yet discovered the joys of the homebuilt AR-15 pistol or the Draco.
Long guns were mostly SKS carbines and illegal cut-down scatterguns. Interestingly, not one shot-up criminal who told me about the sawed-off shotgun they kept back in their crib knew anything about the barrel length restrictions imbedded within the National Firearms Act of 1934. To have even asked would have seemed insane. Methinks there might be a message buried away someplace in that, something deep and timeless, perhaps.
Once they secured their Gat, they had to feed it. Ammo was and is expensive. They didn’t much care about details so long as it went bang. That meant cheap FMJ ball. Think Winchester White Box or the imported Russian steel-cased stuff. Just blasting bullets to us.
Performance Anxiety
Never underestimate the penetration capability of 9mm hardball. There is a reason most tactical teams use rifle-caliber carbines rather than pistol-caliber subguns these days. Believe it or not, those zippy little 5.56mm rounds don’t generally punch as deep through drywall as do 9mm pistol rounds. That’s counterintuitive but nonetheless real. My new lumbering pal was a great example of physics in action.
This particular 115-grain Full Metal Jacket bullet penetrated the steel trunk of his ghetto sled, bored through the back seat, followed subsequently by the front, and finally found a forever home in his ample back fat. The man actually told me he didn’t realize he was shot until he got home, crawled out of his car and noticed all the blood. He claimed the wound was literally painless. How weird is that? He then got back into his hooptie and came to see me. By the time we met, he was starting to get a little bit sore.
The wound was superficial, though it likely would have been through and through for a skinny guy like me. His X-rays were fine, and the bullet had not reached anything important. If I remember correctly, he left with some antibiotics, a tetanus shot and an outpatient follow-up with the university surgeons. The guy was in and out in a couple of hours. Just another day in paradise …
