ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 18, 1996 TAG: 9603180018
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
MARYLAND, it seems, is now the firearms supplier of choice for the criminal establishment in Washington, D.C. - a dubious honor once held by Virginia. As a result, Maryland's legislature is considering whether to follow Virginia's example by passing a law limiting handgun purchases to one a month per customer.
Of course it should. Law-abiding residents of the Old Line State have no more need than do Virginia residents to purchase more than 12 guns a year. Bulk purchases are the trading stock for gunrunners who resell the guns to killers, drug dealers and other hoods.
Evidence mounts, meanwhile, that Virginia's one-a-month law has worked as it was intended - stanching the flow of guns from Virginia into the hands of criminals up and down the Atlantic Seaboard.
The latest study by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence found that after the Virginia law went into effect in July 1993, there was a 65 percent reduction in the number of guns recovered in criminal investigations in Northeastern states that likely could be traced back to Virginia. In New York alone, the reduction was 71 percent.
Some gun enthusiasts will be quick to say that Virginia's law has simply forced the business elsewhere, and not actually reduced gun-related violence and crime. But disrupting gun-trafficking patterns on the East Coast, like disrupting criminal activity in general, has crime-reduction value even if the criminals eventually resume their work in other places.
The gun enthusiasts, however, have a point: The Virginia law probably hasn't stopped the illegal trafficking that puts guns in the hands of criminals in Washington, in New York, wherever. But there certainly are fewer Virginia guns involved. Gun traffickers who once found the commonwealth easy pickings have moved on to do their shopping elsewhere - in states that don't prohibit bulk purchases.
That's all the more reason why there should be a national law restricting gun purchases to one a month. Until Congress shows the sense and courage to pass such a law, Maryland and every other state should act on its own.
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