Tim Kaine Tells Virginia Sheriffs They’re “Bad for Business” — Gets Schooled by Gun-Rights Leaders

There’s a Democratic politician named Tim from a Northern state who’s spent his career trying to dismantle the Second Amendment. You’ve heard plenty about that one — Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, former running mate to one of the worst presidential candidates in American history, who managed to make the Harris campaign even weaker than it already was.

But there’s another Democratic politician named Tim you should know about, and he’s currently making a fool of himself on social media: U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. Like Walz, he’s never met a gun ban he didn’t like. And like Walz, he doesn’t seem to understand that telling Americans they have to give up constitutional rights to “help the business climate” lands about as well as you’d expect.

Kaine’s tweet

In the middle of Virginia’s ongoing gun-control fight — where nine commonwealth’s attorneys and a county sheriff have publicly refused to enforce Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s new ban on commonly-owned semiautomatic rifles — Kaine decided to weigh in. The result was a tweet that’s been getting the response it deserves:

“If I was a business looking for a new site, a public announcement that local law enforcement wouldn’t enforce a law banning assault weapons would make me look elsewhere. Ignoring the law is bad for business.”

A few problems with this argument. Start with the obvious: when companies select sites, they’re looking at tax structure, workforce availability, regulatory environment, and operating costs. Local prosecutorial discretion on a gun law that’s currently being challenged in federal court doesn’t appear on any standard corporate site selection checklist. Kaine just made up a business concern that doesn’t exist to scold prosecutors for following their oaths to the Constitution.

Then there’s the firearms industry. Companies like Smith & Wesson, Beretta USA, Remington, and Sig Sauer have all relocated or expanded operations in recent years based partly on the political climate around firearms. They don’t move to states whose governments are openly hostile to the Second Amendment. They move to states like Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, and South Carolina — places where the local government isn’t trying to ban their products. Kaine’s argument that gun-rights-friendly enforcement is “bad for business” gets the actual industry data exactly backwards.

The gun-rights response

The replies came fast. Philip Van Cleave, president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, didn’t pull punches:

“The only business you’ve ever known is living off the taxpayers’ hard-earned money. You might want to read the Constitution some time. Take a look at the Second Amendment to said Constitution. It’s a lot of words for you, but try to work through it.”

Van Cleave’s point isn’t just rhetorical. Kaine has been in elected office since 1994 — Richmond city council, mayor, Virginia lieutenant governor, governor, and now U.S. senator since 2013. Three decades on the public payroll isn’t the resume of someone qualified to lecture anyone about business climate.

NSSF Senior Vice President Lawrence Keane went after the substantive legal error in Kaine’s framing in his own reply:

“They said they would not enforce an unconstitutional law. There is a difference. The real question is why do you and Gov. Spanberger support an unconstitutional law? BTW, she acknowledged the law bans commonly owned hunting firearms. Please re-read Heller and Bruen.”

Keane’s distinction matters. Prosecutorial discretion to decline cases under a constitutionally questionable law isn’t “ignoring the law” — it’s exactly what prosecutors are supposed to do when their oath to uphold the Constitution conflicts with a state statute. The Supreme Court has been clear in Heller and Bruen about what the Second Amendment protects. The Virginia prosecutors and the Clarke County sheriff who have publicly refused enforcement are reading the Constitution Kaine should also be familiar with.

The hypocrisy

What makes Kaine’s tweet particularly rich is his own track record on prosecutorial discretion when the laws in question affect Democratic priorities rather than gun rights.

When jurisdictions across the country refused to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, Kaine didn’t take to social media to complain that “ignoring the law is bad for business.” He supported those jurisdictions. When local prosecutors declined to charge low-level drug offenses or refused to pursue certain categories of cases for policy reasons, Kaine didn’t argue this made America less attractive to business investment. He generally supported prosecutorial discretion as a legitimate exercise of executive authority.

The pattern is clear: Kaine supports prosecutorial discretion when it produces outcomes he favors. He opposes it when it protects rights he wants to restrict. That’s not principled opposition to “ignoring the law” — that’s selective enforcement of laws he agrees with and selective tolerance for non-enforcement of laws he doesn’t agree with.

Businesses are watching

Here’s the thing Kaine doesn’t seem to grasp: businesses considering Virginia in 2026 are paying attention to the Spanberger administration’s broader trajectory. They’re watching a state government that:

• Passed one of the most aggressive assault weapons bans in the country in the face of clear Bruen-era constitutional problems
• Faces parallel federal lawsuits from SAF, NRA, FPC, and NSSF challenging the legislation
• Has its own attorney general defying state court injunctions on existing gun laws
• Has nine local prosecutors and a sheriff publicly refusing to enforce the new legislation as constitutionally questionable

If anything is “bad for business” in Virginia right now, it’s the political instability the Spanberger administration has created — not the prosecutors and sheriffs trying to maintain constitutional governance in their jurisdictions. Companies don’t relocate to states whose governments are in open constitutional disputes with their own local officials. The non-enforcement coalition isn’t the problem here; it’s the predictable response to a state government overreaching its constitutional authority.

What’s next

The federal lawsuits challenging Virginia’s gun control package will work through the Fourth Circuit on the standard timeline. The non-enforcement coalition will continue to face administration pressure — and based on the Hashmi statement and now Kaine’s tweet, that pressure will increasingly take the form of public attacks on local officials rather than substantive legal arguments.

What it won’t include is Kaine reckoning with his own inconsistency on prosecutorial discretion, his own track record of supporting non-enforcement when it serves Democratic priorities, or his actual understanding of what corporate site selection looks like. Tim Kaine has been in elected office for 32 years. He’ll keep tweeting. The Virginia prosecutors and sheriffs upholding their oaths to the Constitution will keep doing their jobs. The courts will eventually decide whether Virginia’s law survives constitutional scrutiny.

And businesses making site selection decisions will continue to evaluate Virginia based on the criteria businesses actually use — none of which include “what’s the local prosecutor saying about firearms enforcement on Twitter.”