Gun sales are up in Virginia following the repeal of the state's one-handgun-a-month law.
For years, Virginia had a law that kept most people from buying more than one handgun in any 30 day period. That changed on July 1, when the restriction was lifted. Now, statistics indicate the change is good business for gun shops.
There is no way of knowing exactly how many guns are actually sold in Virginia in any given month because private sales aren't tracked. Therefore, background checks for purchases through a dealer don't indicate whether the customer is buying more than one gun.
The number of background checks in Virginia is still way up. The Virginia Firearms Transaction Center says there was a 17 percent increase in July compared to June and a 29 percent jump from this July compared to July 2011.
Mike Brookman, the owner of Albemarle County Firearms LLC, says a majority of people did not know the law was repealed and says he's only noticed people buying multiple handguns because prices are on the rise.
Brookman said, "Folks who had been looking for a particular fire arm, had found it and found a couple of them, they'd really been looking for. Because the sale [of handguns] are gravitating toward the upward incline - they figured, 'I better get them now.'"
Brookman says before the law was created, as long as you had a Virginia concealed carry permit, you could still buy more than one gun. Meaning anyone with that permit was never effected by the old law.
Each time a licensed dealer sells someone more than one handgun within a five-day period, stores are required to fill out a federal form and fax it to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
