Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 18, 1994                   TAG: 9401180146
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                 LENGTH: Medium

GUN FOES ARE FIGHTING UPHILL BATTLE

Del. Jean Cunningham, D-Richmond, joined several other legislators and anti-gun activists on Monday to announce a renewed push for laws that would impose a five-day waiting period on handgun purchases and ban the sale of assault weapons.

None was more urgent in calling for action than Patricia Sill of Virginia Beach, whose 16-year-old daughter was killed by a man with an assault rifle just over a year ago.

"Why weren't there some laws?" Sill demanded, her voice constricted with emotion. "Why wasn't there something to stop a young man from getting his hands on a gun? . . . Those of you that can do something, do something!"

On Dec. 2, 1992, Sill's daughter Amy was bathing when her boyfriend showed up with an AK-47 assault rifle he had bought from a private dealer the day before. Despondent over a breakup, the boyfriend, 20-year-old James Klassen, shot Amy twice, then killed himself.

Sill said the horrible scene - she was frantically trying to call police, and lost a finger to a bullet that passed through both her daughter and a wall - could have been prevented. Klassen apparently snapped because he thought Amy had refused to phone him after he left her a note.

"But between the time he bought the gun and killed her, she had left a message on his machine," Sill said. "A waiting period might have helped."

Cunningham has pushed the General Assembly for several years to enact a waiting period, and pledged on Monday to continue as long as she is in office.

"It's not because of my blackness that I no longer feel free," Cunningham said. "It's because I live in fear that I cannot walk the streets freely."

But when the Democratic Caucus announced its legislative priorities later in the day, nothing was said about gun control.

Political analyst Bob Holsworth of Virginia Commonwealth University said the gubernatorial election, which pitted Allen's promise to abolish parole against Democrat Mary Sue Terry's pitch for a gun-purchase waiting period, has all but extinguished the gun-control movement.

"The public basically said that parole and sentencing issues are more important to them than gun control at the moment," Holsworth said.

Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994