Not long before deadly shootings in the Atlanta area spread fear and anger across Asian American communities Across the country, police say the attacker made a legal purchase: a 9 mm pistol.
In a few hours, they say, he killed eight people, seven of them women and six of Asian descent, in an uproar aimed at massage companies.
If Georgia had demanded that he wait before he got a gun, lawmakers and advocates say, he might not have acted on impulse.
“It is very fast. You go in, fill out the paperwork, do a background check and leave with a gun, ”said Robyn Thomas, executive director of the Giffords Law Center for Prevent Gun Violence. “If you are in a state of crisis, personal crisis, it can cause a lot of damage quickly.”
The purchase was a normal transaction at Big Woods Goods, a store north of Atlanta that complies with federal background checks and is cooperating with the police, said Matt Kilgo, a lawyer for the store.
“There is no indication that there is anything inappropriate,” he said.
The vast majority of states are like Georgia, allowing shoppers to leave a store with a firearm after a background check that can sometimes take minutes. Waiting periods are required in only 10 states and the District of Columbia, although several states are considering legislation this year to impose them.
Defenders of arms control say that requiring an interval of even a few days between the purchase of a weapon and the taking of possession may allow more time for background checks and create a “cool down” period for people who think of injuring the weapon. themselves or someone else. Studies suggest that waiting periods can help reduce firearm suicide rates by up to 11% and firearm homicides by about 17%, according to the Giffords Center.
Georgia’s Democrats plan to introduce legislation that would require people to wait five days between buying a gun and receiving it, said Representative David Wilkerson, who is a minority in the House of Representatives.
“I think a waiting period makes sense,” he said.
An analysis of 2020 by Rand Corp., a nonprofit think tank, also found that the research links waiting periods to decreasing suicide and homicide rates, but determined that the effect on mass shootings was inconclusive because the sample size was too small .
California has one of the longest waiting periods in the country – 10 days. This did not stop more than 1.1 million people from buying weapons last year, which was just before the record number sold in 2016. Meanwhile, arms sales across the country reached record levels last year amid the uncertainty related to the pandemic.
Against this backdrop, lawmakers in at least four states – Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont – have proposed to create or expand waiting periods.
New gun laws will not solve profound problems such as racism, misogyny and violence, said Seo Yoon “Yoonie” Yang, a leader of Students Demand Action, an armed violence prevention group. But they can help keep the weapons out of the hands of people who would do harm in the meantime, she said.
“The legislation is practical. Research shows that it works, ”she said. “It is a change that can happen quickly and efficiently.”
In Colorado, Democratic state deputy Tom Sullivan ran for office after his son Alex died with 11 others when a sniper opened fire at an Aurora cinema eight years ago. Sullivan said he hoped that a waiting period in the legislation he plans to sponsor could help contain domestic violence and suicide.
“In Atlanta, imagine if this guy’s or someone else’s parents were told that he was trying to get a gun. Maybe they could have helped, ”he said. “It wouldn’t hurt anyone to wait … let them take a breath. If there is a problem, let it surface, we will solve it. “
Arms rights advocacy groups, including the National Rifle Association, are opposed to waiting periods. The group points to 2018 federal firearms tracking data which shows that the average time between the first retail sale of a gun and involvement in a crime was almost nine years. They also argue that waiting periods create a delay for people who buy legally, while not affecting illegal arms transfers.
“A deferred right is a denied right,” said Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb.
Gun control legislation is also being passed in Congress. The Senate should consider a bill to expand background checks, but it faces a difficult path – Democrats would need at least 10 Republican votes to pass it. Although the House passed two bills to strengthen checks this month, Congress has not passed any major arms control laws since the mid-1990s.
In Georgia, the Republican-controlled legislature may resist new firearms laws before concluding business later this month. But Wilkerson pointed to recent victories that seemed unlikely, including passing a hate crime law and the likely repeal of the citizens’ arrest law a year after the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man pursued by armed white men while running.
“You will encounter resistance. That doesn’t mean you don’t try, ”said Wilkerson. “In the tragedy, sometimes we can move on. This may be an opportunity to look at another tragedy and do something about it ”.
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Whitehurst reported from Salt Lake City. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington; Don Thompson in Sacramento, California; and Jim Anderson in Denver contributed to this story.