Virginia Tech Families Turn Grief Into Cry For Gun Laws

Mourners Fight To Close Loopholes

Omar Samaha wore a suit to talk to state lawmakers yesterday. It was the same suit he wore to his younger sister Reema's funeral in April after she and 31 other students and teachers at Virginia Tech were shot and killed by Seung Hui Cho.

Samaha pinned a small photo of his 18-year-old sister on his lapel as he urged Northern Virginia lawmakers to take on the state's powerful gun rights lobby and fight for what he called sensible gun reforms.

"This is the only suit I wear every day," the 24-year-old Virginia Tech graduate told lawmakers at the Fairfax County Government Center, five days before the start of the legislative session. "Because every day feels like a funeral to me."

Across from Samaha, sitting on the dais, was his state senator, Ken Cuccinelli II (R-Fairfax). Cuccinelli, a strong supporter of gun rights, had just come from the firing range where his daughters practice archery, not far from where he shoots skeet. Cuccinelli has helped defeat the very gun legislation that Samaha and other victims' family members came to ask lawmakers to approve. He, like the other lawmakers, listened in silence.

In the past few months, a number of families whose children were killed or injured in the massacre have begun to come forward and speak out for gun law reform. They appeared on Capitol Hill with gun control advocate Sarah Brady, who urged a senator to lift his hold on reforms to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Congress later unanimously passed the reform bill. They have appeared at gun raffles and gun shows, protesting current laws. Some, such as Peter Read of Annandale, held up photos of their dead children.

And as they wear maroon-and-orange ribbons on their lapels in memory of the dead and tell how their children died or were injured diving under their desks that day at Norris Hall, they are hoping that the horror of the nation's worst campus massacre and the power of their stories will change the political calculus in Richmond when it comes to guns this year.

The families say they want to make sure guns are not allowed on college campuses. And they want lawmakers to require that everyone who purchases a gun in Virginia first go through the FBI's instant background check system that blocks felons and the mentally disturbed. Although federal law requires background checks, it applies only to federally licensed firearms dealers. No checks are required when a private dealer sells weapons at a gun show. Fifteen states have closed what gun safety advocates call the "gun show loophole."

At a news conference Tuesday, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) is expected to reaffirm his support for closing the loophole. He will be surrounded by Virginia Tech victims' families, with whom he is in regular contact by phone or e-mail. "I think they see it as trying to make something good come out of a horrible situation," he said in an interview.

Cho, of Fairfax County, passed two background checks when he bought the two handguns he later used in the killing spree. Although a judge had found him a danger to himself and ordered him to get outpatient mental health treatment, state law at the time required that only those committed to mental hospitals be reported to the FBI.

Kaine changed the law by executive order just after the shootings, and most lawmakers have agreed to fix this mental health loophole. "That's the easy part," said Joe Samaha of Centreville, Reema's father. Victims' families, he said, want more. Had Cho been denied at a gun store, he said, he could have easily gone to a gun show and bought a gun without question out of the trunk of a private dealer's car.

Even Cuccinelli, who has derailed proposals to close the gun show loophole in the past, calling them an infringement on liberty, agrees there is a change of intensity in the air. In the past, the political rhetoric has centered on battling studies, with gun rights advocates citing one survey of felons saying few purchased their guns at gun shows and gun safety advocates using federal statistics showing a significant portion of private gun show sales wind up in criminals' hands.

"We get gun control and gun freedom proposals every year. I don't want to say we take a blase approach, but there's a lot of repetition. People get in a rut on how they deal with it mentally year after year," he said in an interview. "The tenor of the debate is going to be different. I try to be dispassionate when I make policy decisions, but I certainly feel tremendously for these families."