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Tighter Gun-Buy Checks Advance

August 3, 2007

By Peter Hardin

WASHINGTON — Two weeks before students return to classes at Virginia Tech, a Senate panel voted yesterday to strengthen the national instant background-check system for gun buyers.

Responding to the Virginia Tech massacre, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to advance a measure aimed at closing gaps in the national background-check system.

The panel also authorized spending $400 million a year over five years to help states automate their lists of convicted criminals and the mentally ill who are barred under federal law from buying firearms, and to report the lists to the FBI's background-check system.

That sum was increased from $250 million per year authorized in a similar bill passed by the House in June.

"Obviously there is no magic congressional response that will be guaranteed to prevent another horrific school tragedy," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt.

"The senseless loss of life at Virginia Tech revealed deep flaws in the transfer of information relevant to gun purchases between the states and the federal government," Leahy added. "We are working to close gaps in the . . . system."

Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho went on a rampage April 16, fatally wounding 32 people before killing himself. In 2005, he had been found "an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness" by a special justice and was ordered to get outpatient treatment.

Cho was permitted to buy two firearms in the weeks before using them in the massacre. State law implied that a mentally ill person had to be committed to a facility for the information to be reported for background-check purposes.

"Seung-Hui Cho was not eligible to buy a weapon given his mental-health history, but he was still able to pass a background check because data was missing from the system," Leahy said.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine signed an emergency executive order, two weeks after the Tech shootings, requiring court officials to notify state police of mental-illness findings for firearms background checks, closing a state loophole.

The Senate measure to strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System was part of a package called the "School Safety and Law Enforcement Improvement Act."

Other provisions would allow Justice Department grants for tip lines about potentially dangerous students, surveillance equipment and capital improvements to schools. The bill also would authorize creation of a National Center for Campus Public Safety.

A spokesman for the National Rifle Association, Andrew Arulanandam, said his organization continues to "be supportive of the legislation that would add the names of those adjudicated as mentally defective to the national instant check list."

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, applauded the Senate committee.

The bill "will help ensure that dangerous people who are prohibited from legally purchasing a gun because of mental illness or felony records will be stopped at the checkout counter at a gun store," Helmke said.

Contact staff writer Peter Hardin at phardin@timesdispatch.com or (202) 662-7669.