Mourners Fight To Close Loopholes
By Brigid Schulte and Anita Kumar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 6, 2008
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."
Cuccinelli, who has an A-plus rating from the National Rifle Association, said that if the Virginia Tech stories are powerful enough to create the momentum to close the gun show loophole, gun rights lawmakers will demand a political trade-off, such as a provision to allow faculty and staff and maybe graduate students to carry guns on campus once they've obtained a concealed weapon permit.
It has been more than 10 years since the General Assembly has passed any laws that restrict gun ownership. Instead, in recent years, lawmakers have voted to liberalize gun laws, making it easier to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon and to carry that weapon into once-forbidden territory, such as the parking lot of Reagan National Airport and the statehouse itself.
But many of the family members say if there ever was a time for change, it is now.
W. Gerald Massengill, former superintendent of the Virginia State Police and chairman of the special panel appointed by Kaine to investigate the massacre, agreed. The panel recommended closing the gun show loophole.
"Events like Virginia Tech are things that do tip the scales," he said. "And I personally think that this year, if it's going to happen in Virginia, it's going to happen this year, because it was a tragedy of historical proportions."
The grieving victims' families met for the first time in June, Samaha said. They began e-mailing one another, learning about gun laws and mental health. Many were horrified, including Andrew Goddard, whose son Colin was shot four times and is living with the bullet fragments. "I'm ashamed to say it took me being a parent of an injured student before I became an activist," he said. He is president of the Million Mom March's Richmond chapter. Samaha is starting the Angel Fund to educate the public about gun laws.
Looking at the families' suffering and grief, some wonder how lawmakers could say no to them.
"You can say no in a polite way," said Del. Terry G. Kilgore (R-Scott). Kilgore, chairman of the House Republican caucus, said closing the gun show loophole does not address "the issue at hand." He said he would not support it.
Sen. John S. Edwards (D-Roanoke), whose district includes Virginia Tech, called gun control "a Northern Virginia issue" and said that neither Republicans nor legislators from more rural parts of the state would support a change despite lobbying by the families. "It's a cultural issue in this area of Virginia," he said. "You've got to be sensitive to the cultural values."
Victims' families say they know they are up against seemingly insurmountable odds. But they point to other tragedies such as the wounding of Reagan White House aide James Brady, which eventually led to the Brady law and background checks, as well as the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado and the 1998 shootings at a high school in Oregon that led voters to close the gun show loopholes in those states.
"One delegate at a time. That's how change comes about," Peter Read said yesterday after testifying before the delegation, cradling photos of his daughter and wearing her initials on his lapel. "I've read the quotes, that the insiders say it can't be done. But I'm not coming from a political place." He tapped the photos of his smiling daughter Mary, taken the weekend before she died, his eyes tearing up. "I'm here to say what needs to be said and to speak for my daughter. And for all the people who can't speak out anymore."
Staff writer Tim Craig contributed to this report.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.