Effort to Revive Gun Show Loophole Debate Fails

Associated Press
Published: January 28, 2008

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - An effort to resuscitate seemingly dead legislation to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from buying firearms at gun shows was killed Monday, but the senator behind the push said he isn’t finished fighting for it.
Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, attempted to bring the issue back before the Senate Courts of Justice Committee that voted 9-6 last week to reject legislation to close the so-called gun-show loophole, which allows private owners to sell firearms at gun shows without conducting background checks that licensed dealers are required to perform.
Edwards’ motion to reconsider failed 3-10.
Afterward, Edwards said he thought legislators were simply sick of debating the issue, which has come before the General Assembly several times but gained new urgency this year when the families of Virginia Tech victims got behind it.
A deranged student who last April shot 32 people dead at Virginia Tech before committing suicide didn’t buy his weapons at a gun show, but families of the victims supported the bill as one way to prevent a similar tragedy.
“This is such a hot-button issue that a lot of people would just like for it to go away, but also people on both sides would like to use it for political reasons,” Edwards said.
Edwards had planned to propose that gun-show promoters make the checks available to private sellers who wanted to perform them. Federal law allows only licensed gun dealers and state police access to the database, but Edwards’ proposal would have required promoters to make a licensed dealer available to perform the checks for a small fee.
Edwards said he hoped to get his proposal tacked on to a House bill, but wouldn’t say which one. The House defeated similar legislation earlier in the session. Edwards said he didn’t think Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who strongly supports closing the loophole, would get involved.
Edwards called his proposal a “middle ground that everybody could embrace.”
“The trouble is that both sides want to play political football with this issue and throw a lot of emotion into it as opposed to looking at it rationally,” he said.
While the vote to reconsider was swift, it took lawmakers more than 20 minutes to get there as they debated whether Senate rules allowed the issue to be brought back before the committee after it had voted to send the measure to the Virginia State Crime Commission for a year of study.
The argument grew heated as committee chair Sen. Henry L. Marsh III waffled on his interpretation of the rule and was called out by Republicans for not following proper committee procedure.