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http://www.dailypress.com/news/loca...15,0,7311494.story?coll=dp-headlines-virginia
From the Daily Press (Hampton-Roads, Va.)
From the Daily Press (Hampton-Roads, Va.)
Bill to expand gun checks dies in committee
By JUSTIN BERGMAN
Associated Press Writer
Published January 15, 2003
RICHMOND, Va. -- A bill that would have required unlicensed dealers at gun shows to conduct background checks on people purchasing guns failed to get out of committee Wednesday.
The Senate Courts of Justice Committee decided instead to request a study on the issue by the state Crime Commission. Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, D-Richmond, said the move was a polite way of killing his bill.
"I don't want to waste another year studying it," Marsh said. "There was no argument really against it."
Marsh's bill would have expanded the current state law, which requires federally licensed dealers at gun shows in Virginia to conduct background checks but does not apply to unlicensed dealers. Marsh said the "loophole" makes it easier for criminals to circumvent the system.
"If one person buys a gun illegally and kills somebody, that's a sufficient basis for a bill," he said.
But committee members voted 11-3 to send the measure to the Crime Commission, saying there was insufficient evidence that more background checks at gun shows would significantly lower crime.
"Simply because the NRA opposes it doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong," said Senate Democratic Leader Richard L. Saslaw of Fairfax County. "If this bill is going to pass, I would like to make sure it is going to have some kind of impact."
Marsh and several gun control advocates pointed to a study by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which found that 31 percent of guns used to commit crimes could be traced to gun shows.
But Todd Adkins, the National Rifle Association's deputy director of state and local affairs, said the figure was misleading. He said it only reflects where the guns were initially purchased, not necessarily how the criminals came to own them.
The NRA produced conflicting statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice showing that less than 1 percent of crimes are committed using guns purchased at gun shows. The study was compiled after conducting interviews with more than 200,000 inmates in state and federal prisons in the late 1990s.
"The committee obviously realized that there isn't a direct connection between private transfers of firearms at gun shows and a crime problem here in the state," Adkins said.
Sen. William C. Mims, R-Loudoun, said the issue needed to be studied in greater detail. If the bill passed, he said, unlicensed dealers could simply set up a blanket outside a gun show and sell their guns without performing the requisite background checks.
He said there was no difference between this and selling guns over the Internet, through newspaper ads or in private homes.
"It seems we should regulate all of them (private dealers) if we're going to regulate any of them," Mims said.
June Hazlehurst, president of the Richmond area Million Mom March, said the human factor needed to be taken into account.
"We want common sense gun laws," she said. "We don't think that's asking a lot to keep our children safe."
Bill to expand gun checks dies in committee
Copyright © 2003, Daily Press
