By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; B01

The Virginia State Crime Commission has agreed to study private sales at gun shows, which are made without background checks. But members have already made clear that they don't plan to do anything about the issue.

The 13-member panel said it will not make a recommendation for legislation to the General Assembly on the contentious issue after the commission meets to receive a draft of the report in September.

Which prompts the question: Why do the study at all?

"It's pathetic," said Andy Goddard, whose son, Colin, was shot four times in the Virginia Tech massacre last year and survived. "The fact that [commissioners] said from the beginning that this study would not result in any legislation, no matter what they found out, makes this a toothless effort."

Banning private sales at gun shows, which advocates of gun restrictions call the "gun show loophole," was a top priority in the General Assembly for some families whose children were killed or wounded in the Virginia Tech shootings. But after their emotional testimony and tenacious lobbying, a House bill to change the law died almost instantly in committee. A Senate bill was killed, too, but with a sweetener requiring a study by the crime commission, a group of lawmakers and citizens appointed by the governor.

At the time, advocates of retooling the law likened the move to "burying" the issue.

"The same thing happened to a similar gun show bill in 2003," Goddard said. "And it disappeared without a trace."

Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax), chairman of the crime commission, defended the study, saying that advocates on both sides of the issue cite competing studies, use different statistics and have different interpretations of the law.

"Because this issue is so politically charged, all we want to do is to give everyone the same information, so when we're passing laws everyone knows what the laws are," he said. "At gun shows, I don't know why one person who sells guns has to be federally licensed and another person doesn't. And I imagine no one else in the House of Delegates does either. Those are the kinds of things we want to find out."

Albo said the commission will look not only at the laws surrounding private sales, which are unmonitored and unregulated, but at how the sales are transacted. "There might be a bunch of people out there just saying that they're selling guns from a private collection, but they're actually in the business of selling guns. If that ends up being true after we finish the study, I imagine all of us will agree to bring them within the law," he said.

Albo distanced himself from lawmakers who oppose any kind of gun law change. "I'm not one of those Republicans who thinks this loophole, or whatever it is, shouldn't be changed," he said. "I think every person who buys a gun should have a record check. How that's done, I don't know the mechanisms. And that's what the study's for."

The commission agreed last week to have its staff study federal law and gun show laws in other states. The commission also plans to ask Virginia State Police for any statistics that agency keeps on private gun sales.

But the state police won't have much to report.

"As far as gun shows go, there is no monitoring that's done by the state police," said Corinne Geller, spokeswoman for the agency. "We don't know what [the commission is] going to ask for, and we're not sure what we can produce for them."

The only role state police have in gun shows, she said, is facilitating background checks done by federally licensed firearms dealers. Troopers are often on hand at the larger shows to arrest those who are found, through background checks, to have lied on application forms about their criminal, immigration or mental records, Geller said.

Regardless of what the study finds, unregulated private sales will continue to be hotly debated in Richmond. Del. C. Charles Caputo (D-Fairfax) said he plans to introduce legislation again next session to require background checks on private sales. "Maybe if the study gives us more information, it will help me make a better argument," he said.