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

DATE: MONDAY, August 7, 1995                   TAG: 9508290067
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ONE-A-MONTH

THE STATE secretary of public safety, Jerry Kilgore, says Virginia's two-year-old law limiting handgun purchases to one per month ``may have had an effect in reducing guns going to Northeastern states, but has not reduced Virginia's crime rate.''

To further damn it with faint praise, he might have added that it also hasn't reduced teen pregnancy or acid rain.

The point is that the law has reduced illegal gunrunning in Virginia, stanching the flow of guns up and down the East Coast, and perhaps ending Virginia's notoriety as the firearms supplier of choice for the Atlantic Seaboard's criminal establishment.

That was the purpose of the legislation identified when then-Gov. Douglas Wilder proposed it and a bipartisan majority of state legislators passed it. Its supporters never couched it as an omnibus anti-crime bill or the solution to gun-related violence in Virginia.

It's no surprise, of course, that the National Rifle Association also pooh-poohs a recent study showing that Virginia's one-gun-a-month law is working as intended. The NRA worked overtime to try to kill the legislation. Also, the study was done by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, an education and research arm of Handgun Control, and was largely based on data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Neither the gun-control lobby nor the BATF is what you'd call the NRA's best buddy.

Nonetheless, the study showed that before the law took effect in July 1993, 35 percent of all guns recovered by police in the Northeast and traced to dealers in the Southeast came from Virginia. The supply from Virginia shrunk to 15 percent after Virginia's law went on the books. That's a 54 percent reduction. In New York state alone, the reduction was 61 percent.

Of course, the law doesn't necessarily mean that fewer guns end up in criminals' hands. With only South Carolina having a similar limit on gun purchases, there are still plenty of states where gunrunners can stock up without restrictions.

Virginians, though, should be glad to hear the law at least is making a dent in the illegal weapons trade. Results so far give other states cause to follow suit.

by CNB