
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 4, 1993                   TAG: 9308040085
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BY MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

ASSAULT WEAPONS RARE, STATE LAB SAYS

Fewer than 5 percent of the guns turned over to state forensic scientists by local police are the assault-type weapons the Wilder administration is considering regulating, a gubernatorial task force was told Tuesday.

According to the testimony, 3.3 percent of the 1,171 weapons analyzed in the state laboratories last year were assault weapons. The percentage was 2.9 in 1991, and 4.1 in the first three months of 1993.

The state lab is involved in 30 percent to 40 percent of the state's homicides in a given year.

That disclosure came as the task force - assigned by Gov. Douglas Wilder to come up with a plan for limiting assault weapons - moved toward adopting a recommendation.

The group, which had planned to complete its work Tuesday, scheduled a final session and a public hearing on its proposal for Sept. 8. A report is due to Wilder by Sept. 15.

As the committee honed its likely proposal, Chairman O. Randolph Rollins and other members suggested that they should not be deterred by the state laboratory figures.

"The actual number of cases is a fairly low percentage," acknowledged Rollins, Wilder's secretary of public safety. But he urged the public and legislators, who will decide the fate of any assault weapons legislation, to apply "a risk-benefit analysis."

"Is the benefit of the presence of an assault weapon in the hands of our citizens such as to outweigh the risk associated with it?" he asked.

Four states - California, New Jersey, Hawaii and Connecticut - have banned such guns, popularly defined as military-style weapons capable of rapidly spraying out a large number of bullets.

Wilder convened the task force earlier this summer after legislation to ban Tec-9 semiautomatic pistols failed in the General Assembly. His mandate to the group was to draft a proposal for a comprehensive attack on such weapons.

by CNB