Va. Senate passes bill allowing air guns at homes

By Dena Potter

RICHMOND

Localities would be prohibited from banning the firing of BB guns, paintball guns and other air-propelled weapons on private property under a bill approved Tuesday in the Senate.

The Senate voted 25-14 in favor of Sen. Roscoe Reynolds' bill, which would allow the use of pneumatic weapons when fired with "reasonable care" to prevent shots from going outside of the property.

Opponents argued that the weapons, some with the same firing power as a small rifle, are dangerous.

The guns were responsible for 39 deaths nationwide from 1990 through 2000, including 32 people under the age of 15, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

"Is the National Rifle Association so powerful that we can't stop this kind of dangerous, reckless use of guns?" Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax, asked his colleagues before the vote. "I don't care if it's discharged by powder or discharged by air, the result is the same — injury, death, danger."

Marsden said he still has "dents in my head and other parts of my body" from BB gun fights with his friends when he was young, when advertisements for Daisy air rifles were found on the backs of comic books.

"But these little pellets, these little BBs, they didn't go very far and they didn't go very fast. They could take an eye out, but nobody died," he said.

Today's air rifles can fire projectiles at more than 1,400 feet per second. They come with warnings that they could cause serious injury or death, he said.

"It's not the air rifle of my youth," Marsden said.

Philip Van Cleave, president of the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League, said opponents are wrong to focus on the velocity instead of the projectile itself. There's a difference in throwing a marshmallow or a baseball, he said.

But Van Cleave said the group's position boils down to one word: freedom.

"Why is the government crawling around in someone's home?" he said. "It's about freedom, liberty, and trying to back the government down."

Van Cleave said he agrees that if the shot goes outside of the property the shooter should be held responsible.

Currently, localities can prohibit shooting the guns in highly populated areas or require those under 16 to be monitored by an adult. Localities are prohibited from banning their use at shooting ranges and other areas designated for discharging firearms.

Reynolds, a Democrat from Henry County, said his bill would simply extend that to private property.

The NRA helped draft the legislation. A lobbyist for the organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"For one of those firearms to be allowed to be shot into someone's back yard is unacceptable," said Lori Haas, who became a gun control activist after her daughter was shot four times but survived at Virginia Tech. "Accidents to neighbors and friends and children and pets are likely."

The bill now goes to the Republican-controlled House of Delegates, which traditionally favors bills expanding gun rights.