CHESAPEAKE, Va. – State Delegate Cliff Hayes (D) is introducing legislation to implement a three-day waiting period to purchase guns in Virginia.
“We need to do something to begin to deal with these shootings,” said Hayes, who represents the Greenbrier area of Chesapeake where a Walmart store manager gunned down six employees inside the store. Investigators said the shooter purchased the gun used in the mass shooting the same day.
“This waiting period thing is something that actually, I believe, could have affected the outcome here,” Hayes said.
According to a 2017 study in the National Academy of Sciences, “waiting period laws that delay the purchase of firearms by a few days reduce gun homicides by 17 percent.” The same study also found “waiting periods also lead to a seven to eleven percent reduction in gun suicides per year.”
“Nobody likes gun violence,” said Steve Dowdy, the owner of Bob’s Gun Shop in Norfolk. “But [what] we deal with on a daily basis is people that have had [things happen] the night before. Their house has been broken into, [and] they’re truly in fear for their life. Or they’ve got a situation where they need a firearm, and for somebody to say, hey you’ve got to wait three days to protect yourself, there’s another side to that argument.”
According to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, nine states and the District of Columbia have waiting periods that apply to the purchase of at least some types of firearms. Waiting periods are as long as 14 days in Hawaii, and as short as three days in Illinois.
“In human behavior, that explosion of anger and frustration, it could be committing some kind of heinous act against other people,” said clinical psychologist Dr. Kristie Norwood. “But if I have that moment to get that release, I may act differently.”
Dr. Norwood said gun purchase waiting periods could make a difference in impulsive gun purchasers with dark intentions.
“Think about it like a pressure cooker, or like a balloon. If we’re able to release that, then that popping sensation doesn’t happen,” said Dr. Norwood. “That explosion doesn’t happen.”
The number of Americans seeking to purchase firearms is soaring. For example, according to data from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, there were nearly 8.5 million background checks done in the year 2002. Twenty years later, in 2022, there were nearly 32 million. Less than half of a percent of applications have been denied, usually because of criminal records.
Additionally, deaths by firearms are up, too. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearm homicide rates increased 35 percent from 2019 to 2020. Moreover, 37 people died across Virginia in 20 mass shootings last year.
Dowdy said it could take as little as 30 seconds for someone to be approved to purchase a gun if their background check through NICS comes back clean. However, he said he’d prefer additional studies on gun purchase waiting periods before acknowledging them as a way to curb gun violence.
“[The data] is out there. I get it. I read it, but I don’t think it’s really something that’s concrete,” said Dowdy, who also explained that his employees deny purchases if they feel the buyer is up to something heinous. He said he wants a system to alert gun shop owners about customers they’ve turned away over concerns.
“All [turned away purchasers] have to do is go down to the next store that sells firearms, and maybe we’ve taught them how not to act because we denied a sale for whatever reason,” Dowdy said.
News 3 reached out to the Republican Party of Virginia and Governor Glenn Youngkin for comment regarding gun purchase waiting periods, but there was no response at the time of this report.
