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The shutdown of a gun ring supplied with more than 200 guns bought in Virginia for resale in New York City has reinvigorated calls for a state law that limits handgun purchases to one per month.

Proponents wanting to restore a so-called “one-gun-a-month” measure in Virginia say it would stifle the flow of guns from the state to crime scenes elsewhere, and that a law repealed in 2012 after nearly 20 years on the books did just that.

Those opposed say the law would affect only law-abiding gun buyers.

Neither has it quite right.

In 1993, the year then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, signed the law, Virginia was the top supplier of guns recovered at crime scenes in New York and other northeastern states by way of the “iron pipeline” of Interstate 95.

Three years later, when the Virginia State Crime Commission studied the law after the first bill was introduced to repeal it — it was a constant target by Republicans — Virginia dropped to eighth on the list of source states for firearms trafficking, according to figures from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives cited in the 1996 commission report.

There, in eighth place, Virginia remains — even after the law’s repeal.