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House Backs Tighter Gun Rules

June 14, 2007

By Peter Hardin

WASHINGTON — Responding to the Virginia Tech massacre, the House passed legislation yesterday aimed at strengthening the instant background-check system for firearms buyers.

The bill would require states to automate their lists of convicted criminals and the mentally ill who are prohibited How the Virginia mental-health system missed opportunities.Page A6.under federal law from buying firearms, and to report those lists to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. It would authorize $250 million per year over five years to help states do the work.

The House acted just hours before the Bush administration reported on policy lessons learned from the April 16 murders of 32 students and faculty in Blacksburg.

On a compromise reached by senior Democrats and the National Rifle Association, the House passed by voice vote a bill to strengthen the national background check system, in part to keep people adjudged mentally defective from buying guns. The measure now moves to the Senate, where its chances are considered good.

"It's a very positive thing," Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said of the House vote on what could become the first major federal gun-control law in 13 years. "I'm happy the Congress has moved quickly."

Separately, the Bush administration released a report on ways to prevent tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech, while steering clear of assessing blame there.

It emphasized clearing up confusion about overlapping privacy laws that may keep teachers, doctors and police from sharing information about a mentally ill person on the brink of violence.

"They can in fact share information when a person's safety or the community's safety is . . . potentially in danger," said Michael O. Leavitt, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Ron Honberg, a spokesman for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said his group was disappointed by the report overall. "It's time for us to say it as it is, that our nation's mental-health system is failing people," he said.

Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho went on a rampage April 16 before killing himself in what was the worst shooting massacre in modern U.S. history.

In 2005, Cho was found "an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness" by a special justice and was ordered to get outpatient treatment.

He was permitted to buy two guns in the weeks before using them in the massacre because 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.

Not only did Cho's roommates notice he had problems, but professors voiced concern over his writings about violence.

The House yesterday passed a bill negotiated over weeks behind closed doors. It would require states to supply to the background-check system all relevant records disqualifying potential firearms purchasers.

A leading gun-control advocate who pushed the bill, Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York, said it would bring into the background-check system "millions and millions of names that are sitting in boxes in courtrooms across this country."

The Bush administration report called for improving the background-check system and noted that only 23 states give data to it about people barred from buying guns for mental-health reasons. (Virginia has been in the forefront of the 23 states.) Bush referred yesterday to that section of the report.

"With the findings in this report in mind, I am closely following legislative efforts to strengthen the instant background-check system," the president said in a statement.

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-9th, who was involved in drafting the House bill, said he was "confident that when it is presented to the president, he will sign it into law." Virginia Tech is located in Boucher's district.

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

Kaine said yesterday he's going to have a private, face-to-face meeting with victims' family members to listen to their concerns about the investigation by a high-level panel of the massacre. The meetings will be private.

Bush sent Cabinet officials around the country to meet with school officials, mental-health experts and local leaders to study what could be done to avoid another tragedy like what happened at Virginia Tech.

The report, prepared by the departments of Education, Justice, and HHS also highlighted these other issues:

Contact Peter Hardin at phardin@mediageneral.com or (202) 662-7669 .