ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 27, 1997 TAG: 9701270011
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
IT ALLOWS NO EXCEPTIONS in its effort to keep people with a history of domestic violence from owning a gun.
A new law that makes it illegal for wife beaters and abusive parents to own a gun was meant for the likes of James T. Smith.
Smith, who assaulted his wife repeatedly until their marriage fell apart, flew into a jealous rage and shot her dead at her Northwest Roanoke home in 1993.
But it's questionable if Smith would have been deterred by a federal law that prohibits anyone with a misdemeanor conviction involving domestic abuse from owning or carrying a firearm. After all, Smith was already barred from having a gun as a convicted felon, and that didn't keep the murder weapon out of his hands.
While some may question the statute's effectiveness against lawbreakers, it's clearly had an impact on law enforcers.
Concerned there might be violators within their own ranks, Roanoke-area police departments and sheriff's offices have spent countless hours recently making criminal record checks on their officers. As an alternative, some agencies are requiring officers to sign a statement attesting they have no domestic-abuse convictions.
Because the law has no exceptions - deer hunters, soldiers and police are all affected - and no time limit, the fear was that an officer could lose his job over a long-past conviction that was once considered a minor blemish on an otherwise spotless record.
So far, that fear has proven unfounded.
"Right now, we know of no one who has been convicted," said Maj. J.L Viar of the Roanoke Police Department. That also was the case with police agencies in Bedford, Blacksburg, Radford, Rocky Mount, Salem, Roanoke County and the counties of Bedford, Botetourt, Franklin, Montgomery and Pulaski.
However, with about 700,000 local, state and federal law officers nationwide, more than a few have lost their livelihoods because of the law. In Norfolk, a sheriff's deputy was fired after being convicted of slapping his wife, and at least one Virginia Beach police officer was reassigned to desk duty.
The new law, which passed Congress with little fanfare as part of a federal spending bill in September, applies to anyone convicted of a misdemeanor for using or attempting to use physical force or making verbal threats against an intimate partner or family member. The penalty is up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
It already is illegal for a convicted felon to possess a firearm.
Most law enforcement supervisors said a domestic-abuse conviction - albeit a misdemeanor - would have been enough to keep someone off their force regardless of the law. You don't want the officer who responds to a domestic dispute to have been charged under similar circumstances, said Capt. Jeff Dudley of the Salem Police Department.
"It would be hard for us to justify having somebody here that we know has a problem with either temper or retaliation," said Chief Deputy K.L. Smith of the Botetourt County Sheriff's Office.
But when all it takes is a conviction for verbal assault or attempted physical force, some argue that the law goes too far.
``You have to realize that simple assault is enough to keep someone from owning a gun,'' said Dick Owens, a manager at On Target, a Roanoke gun store. ``All you have to do is say: `I'm going to knock your block off' in front of witnesses, and that's assault.''
Sorting out the facts of a domestic-abuse case can be difficult with misdemeanors, which generally are recorded in courts ``not of record'' that have sketchy details. Cases older than 10 years are often purged from General District Court records, and assaults tried in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court are sometimes shielded from public view.
All that makes enforcing a simple law much more complicated.
"I don't think they did their homework on this one," said Roanoke Sheriff Alvin Hudson, who oversees the jail and courtroom security. "This is going to be one of the most difficult things that administrators in large departments are going to have to deal with."
There already is talk at the national level of reducing the law's scope. Critics also say the law might be unconstitutional because it increases the punishment for a crime retroactively.
The law has made more work for Virginia State Police, who compile a criminal-record database that is used for background checks on anyone who tries to buy a gun from a licensed dealer.
"Part of the problem with the whole thing is that if a person has an assault conviction, you can have problems trying to figure out if it was a barroom fight with two guys getting into it, or if it really involved domestic abuse," said Lt. George Crowder of the state police's record management division in Richmond.
"It requires quite a bit of research," he said.
But there's no doubt that the law has prevented some domestic abusers from buying guns.
From Nov. 8 to Jan. 19, gun stores across Virginia turned away 140 potential customers after the state police record check found a domestic-abuse conviction. But that's a relatively small number, considering that state police average about 500 record checks a day, Crowder said.
So far, there have been no prosecutions - involving police officers or civilians - under the law in U.S. District Court in Western Virginia, according to Jim Silvey, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Roanoke.
Silvey said his most frequent experience with the law has been fielding questions from area police departments. The same concerns apply not just to police officers, but to anyone who might be prosecuted under the law.
``That's the concern,'' Silvey said. ``Not that we just enforce it, but that we enforce it equally across the United States.''
Staff writers Lisa Garcia and Todd Jackson contributed to this story.
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