Not sure if it is state law, or whatever, but when I lived there most of the dealers demanded two forms of ID to sell you a gun. They would accept voter registration which is funny as there is no picture on that. All of them made a big deal about selling "assault weapons", whatever that means. each dealer had a different definition, but the most common was "any semi-automatic rifle".
VA also has one-handgun-a-month, but trades and private sales do not count. Of course I am not giving legal advice, just recalling what I went thru when living there.
I bought a shotgun at one of the big-box stores that is all about shooting and the outdoors, and they were a real mess. I felt like I was in CA, not VA. Long story, but they did not strike me as truly gun-friendly. Most of the small shops and real gun stores were pretty cool, though.
There is a real lack of shooting ranges, and they are crowded and expensive compared to out west. People go nuts at the range, and I have never seen anything like it in the military, police ranges, or public ranges in the rest of the country. Lots of unsafe stuff, like mag dumps where the last rounds hit the ceiling. It always seemed like about 10% of the shooters at ranges I went to in VA would be kicked out of most ranges in the rest of the US, immediately.
Lots more class 3 stuff than anywhere else I've lived (except military bases of course). Just an observation.
Most folks in VA, and the East Coast in general, think VA is a real free state. If you are coming from the Southwest, or Pacific Northwest, or Rocky Mountain states, you will probably feel a bit more limited in VA, gunrights-wise. VA is much better than MD, for example, let alone NY/NJ/MA. But it is nowhere near as gun friendly as WA, AZ, UT, NV, MT, WY, AK... I could go on with 15 or 20 more states.
I used to have this conversation with other folks that moved to VA from really free states. The locals felt they were in some sort of right-wing paradise, but this was all in comparison to the nearby slave labor states to the North and East. If you are from a state like Alaska you will feel like you entered a low security prison. I moved there from Washington state and I felt a little bit trapped the whole time, and I lived out near WV and stayed clear of the DC metro area as much as possible.
I hate to be the bearer of less sunshine and fewer unicorns, as VA is not all bad. It is just that I would give it a 7 or 7.5 on a scale of 10, 10 being AZ or AK or UT.