The House Committee on Militia Police and Public Safety voted 15-6 today to eliminate Virginia’s one-gun-a-month limit on the purchase of handguns.
The vote came after emotional testimony in which the sponsor, Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Prince William, said the ban was no longer needed.
Andrew Goddard, father of Virginia Tech shooting survivor Colin Goddard, argued that only gunrunners need to buy more than one handgun a month.
The vote was largely along party lines. Two Democrats voted with the Republican majority.
The measure now goes to the full House of Delegates.
The one-gun-a-month law, which passed in 1993, was a key initiative of then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat.
Last year both candidates for governor, Democrat R. Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell, said they would sign bills to repeal the law.
Wilder cited Deeds’ pledge to repeal the law as one reason why he declined to endorse the Democratic nominee.
“In my conversations with the people across the state, I have not encountered anyone who has listed as their priority the need for them to have more handguns,“ Wilder said in declining to back Deeds.
McDonnell defeated Deeds for attorney general in 2005 and for governor in 2009. The NRA endorsed Deeds in 2005, but switched to McDonnell last year.
Deeds, as a member of the House of Delegates, voted against the one-gun-a-month bill, while McDonnell, as a member of the House, voted for it.
McDonnell now says he has changed his mind and would sign a bill to repeal the measure.
Since the 1993 legislation, there have been “tremendous advances” in instant background checks and in the law on straw purchases, McDonnell said last August during an online chat at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
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