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Va. Code Ann. § 18.2-83

Threats to bomb, damage, or discharge a firearm within or at buildings or means of transportation; false information as to danger to such buildings, etc.; punishment; venue

Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Woods v. Winchester School Board (1999)

Most recently applied in 68 Va. App. 736 - Grace Nadine McGuire v. Commonwealth of Virginia (May 2018)

Code 1950, §§ 18.1-78.1 through 18.2-78.4; 1960, c. 358; 1975, cc. 14, 15; 1982, c. 502; 2020, c. 1002; 2022, c. 336; 2025, c. 368.

How often courts cite this section

199320002010201810
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

A. Any person (i) who makes and communicates to another by any means any threat to bomb, burn, destroy, discharge a firearm within or at, or in any manner damage any place of assembly, building or other structure, or means of transportation or (ii) who communicates to another, by any means, information, knowing the same to be false, as to the existence of any peril of bombing, burning, destruction, discharging of a firearm within or at, or damage to any such place of assembly, building or other structure, or means of transportation is guilty of a Class 5 felony, provided, however, that if such person is under 18 years of age, he is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

B. A violation of this section may be prosecuted either in the jurisdiction from which the communication was made or in the jurisdiction where the communication was received.

Official source: Virginia Law Portal (LIS). Reproduced from public-domain Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.