Fifth District candidate convicted on concealed-weapon charge

Bradley Rees, a candidate for the Republican nomination to run for Congress from the 5th District in 2010, was convicted Wednesday of illegally possessing concealed weapons.

Rees was fined $100 in Lynchburg General District Court, and said afterward he would “absolutely” continue his campaign to unseat Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District.

“It’s nothing I’m ashamed of,” Rees said, adding that he thought keeping two handguns in his car was safer than keeping them at home, where he has “two curious kids.”

“Your successes shape you as much as your failures,” Rees said.

Rees pleaded no contest in court, and said later that the violation occurred a month before he announced his candidacy on June 25.

According to a prosecutor’s evidence summary, Lynchburg police stopped Rees’ car on May 21 because it displayed an expired inspection rejection sticker.

When the two officers asked Rees to look in the glove box for his vehicle registration, he told them he had a loaded .380-caliber handgun in the box.

He also told them there was an unloaded .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun on the floor. Rees did not have a permit for carrying concealed weapons.

If the firearms had been in plain view on the seat, they would have been legal, Rees said. But he also felt he couldn’t leave the guns in sight while the vehicle was parked at work, he said.

Police confiscated both guns, and Judge Harold Black ruled Wednesday that Rees must forfeit them.

Rees said he had planned to take a hunter-safety course that would have qualified him to apply for a concealed-weapons permit. The course was taught by a friend in Appomattox, Rees said, “and I figured that as long as somebody was going to get paid for it, it might as well be someone I know.”

Twice, however, he was required to work on the Saturdays the course was being taught, so he hadn’t yet acquired the proof of firearms proficiency that is required for a concealed-weapons permit.

Rees said his car had failed a state inspection because of bad brakes and taillight.

He had fixed the brakes, he said, and was on his way to buy a light bulb after work, about 5:30 p.m., when police pulled him over.

Although officers charged Rees with two concealed-weapons offenses and having an expired sticker, he was convicted of just one weapons violation.

The inspection charge was dismissed because the car had been fixed, prosecutor Mike Doucette said.

Rees is one of three announced candidates for the 5th District seat. The other candidates are Feda Kidd Morton, a schoolteacher in Fluvanna County, and Laurence Verga, a real estate investor from Ivy in Albemarle County.