SATchives,
I did some preliminary searching on Virginia. Northern Virginia is where all the hardcore democrats are. The closer you get to D.C. the closer you get to these types of people who want it taken away. You can also find these hardcore leftists in the city of Richmond, especially in VCU where the city and the college are intertwined. Other college towns also skew the votes. The rest of Virginia do not follow these sentiments. They are traditionally southern and still value old-school values. It's a stereotype, but it's mostly true. You can see this in the voting statistics and surveying of what people value the most: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Virginia
https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+HB567
This is a direct link to the session, which I got from your article.
This is absolutely bizarre. Who is making these laws and what do they accomplish? They really don't accomplish anything, and does not contribute to safety or decreased crime rates. These only serve to decrease the liberties of the people.