RICHMOND, Va. -- A Virginia law limiting handgun purchases to one per month was repealed Tuesday, over the opposition of gun control supporters and relatives of victims who survived the Virginia Tech massacre.

Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell signed the bill into law after it was passed two weeks ago by the GOP-controlled General Assembly. He did not comment on signing the bill, though he said earlier he supported repealing the law.

The governor met Saturday with families of people killed or injured in the April 2007 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. The families had hoped to persuade him to veto the bill, although they knew it was a long shot.

Andrew Goddard, whose son Colin was wounded at Virginia Tech, was at the meeting. He said the governor had previously said he would sign the bill and "it would have been very difficult for him to go back on it."

McDonnell is seen as a contender for his party's vice presidential nomination in 2012. He signed the repeal a day after a high school student opened fire with a handgun at an Ohio school, killing three students and wounding two others.

Opponents worry that lifting the limit could spur an increase in gun violence.

'They have not learned'
Goddard, president of the Virginia Center for Public Safety, reserved his harshest criticism for legislators who passed the bill.

"They have not learned a damn thing," Goddard said. Alluding to Monday's school shooting that left three students dead in Ohio, Goddard said: "Here we are watching kids dying in other states, and we're going to be a purveyor of firearms for other states."

Lori Haas, whose daughter Emily was wounded in the shooting that left the gunman and 32 others dead at Virginia Tech, said she was disappointed by the governor's action.

"Getting rid of the one-handgun-a-month law will make it easier for gun traffickers to purchase handguns in bulk," she said in a written statement. "There have been too many tragedies in other states fueled by guns that come from Virginia, and this will only make the situation worse."

Del. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Prince William and sponsor of the repeal bill, said the one-handgun limit didn't accomplish much for law enforcement.

"I think Virginians deserve effective laws, and one handgun a month has been overtaken by technology and improved background checks," he said. "Criminals don't go into gun stores, stand there in the bright light, hand over their driver's license and stand there and wait for the vendor to see if they have a criminal record."

He added: "If you really want to get after gun crime, you get after people who use guns illegally. You don't punish law-abiding citizens."

The 1993 law was a major legislative legacy of Democratic former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, passed when Virginia was a favorite armory for East Coast criminals. It never applied to rifles or shotguns.

The law was intended to slow the flow of guns from Virginia to New York City and other metropolitan areas in the Northeast. In 1991, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that 40 percent of the 1,236 guns found at crime scenes in New York had been purchased in Virginia.

Goddard said the repeal legislation was one of 30 gun bills his organization opposed this year in a session that has seen an increase in conservative measures pushed by Republicans, who strengthened their House majority and gained control of the Senate in last November's elections. Ten of those bills are still alive, he said, whereas in previous years only one or two pro-gun bills typically were passed.

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The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell says he wants amendments to an ultrasound-before-abortion bill.

Updated at 6:35 p.m. ET: RICHMOND, Va. -- State Republican legislators have scrapped a bitterly contested proposal to require women seeking abortions to undergo invasive ultrasound imaging.

Shortly after Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell announced his opposition to the Republican bill, the state House on Wednesday approved a substitute version that still mandates an ultrasound but makes the transvaginal procedure optional.

The House of Delegates voted 65-32 for the watered-down version. Under the substitute, women would still be required to have an ultrasound before an abortion to determine the gestational age, but women subject to a transvaginal procedure would be able to decline, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

That likely dooms the measure.

The amended bill now returns to the Senate where its sponsor, Sen. Jill Vogel, said she will strike the legislation.

"There are moments when you are a legislator when you have to stop and you have to have a moment of real conscience,” Vogel said, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I sort of had that moment this morning considering the outcome and the fate of this bill.”  

Vogel said after hearing from doctors and other constituents that she felt she could not did not “carry the bill in its current form.”

The House action came moments after McDonnell -- facing outrage from women and appeals from GOP moderates -- announced he was opposing the original bill requiring vaginal probes.

McDonnell, a social conservative who says he is "pro-life," appealed for amendments to the bitterly contested legislation. In a transvaginal ultrasound, a wand-like device is inserted and used to send out sound waves.

Until this week, McDonnell and his aides had said the governor would sign the measure if it made it to his desk.

"Over the past days I have discussed the specific language of the proposed legislation with other governors, physicians, attorneys, legislators, advocacy groups, and citizens. It is apparent that several amendments to the proposed legislation are needed to address various medical and legal issues which have arisen," the governor said in a written statement.

Among the amendments McDonnell proposed: to explicitly state that no woman will have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound involuntarily, and that only an external ultrasound will be required to satisfy the requirements to determine gestational age.

The bill had already won Senate passage. Opponents say it amounts to the state violating a woman's privacy. Supporters say it is medically prudent to determine fetal gestational age and, perhaps, discourage abortions.

Related: Texas begins enforcing strict anti-abortion sonogram law

While the original Virginia bill does require an ultrasound, it does not require the woman to view it, making it less strict than laws in Texas and Oklahoma, according to The New York Times.

More than 1,000 people, most of them women, on Monday locked arms and stood mute outside the Virginia State Capitol to protest the bill and other anti-abortion legislation under consideration by state lawmakers.

Comedian Jon Stewart poked fun at the measure Tuesday night on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show.”

The Associated Press and NBC12.com contributed to this story.

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