Bill to Improve Background Checks for Gun Buyers

According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the United States Senate has cleared a bill on Thursday for strengthening background checks in the aftermath of the tragedy at Virginia Tech University. This bill would increase and improve the Brady background check system, giving more financial incentive to states in order to report to the system records of all individuals whom should not be able to buy guns.

This new and updated bill will give more strength to the enforcement of gun laws. By forwarding records of prohibited buyers to the NICS ( National Instant Criminal Background System, states will be awarded with incentives. With this bill, hundreds of gun purchases will be blocked to prohibited buyers who are not presently stopped by the Brady Law. Why? There names were not in the background system before. States will be awarded money to set up systems to send records as well as be penalized for failing to do this.

"Senator Patrick Leahy and the Senate Judiciary Committee took an important step today to help prevent tragedies like Virginia Tech," said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "This measure will strengthen the Brady background check system by making the records of 'prohibited purchasers' more complete. It 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."

So why does this come after the after mark if Virginia Tech? The shooter of this tragedy that occurred on April 16th was not allowed to purchase guns that he used during the shooting but he still got ahold of them. He was able to purchase the guns because of failings in Virginia's reportings dealing with mental health orders that should have been send to the Brady Law's background check system. After this tragedy, Virginia's governor, Tim Kaine, recognized that this was indeed an issue and has worked to improve the states's reporting of records.

While many would th ink Virginia is behind for such a things as mental healthy illnesses not being reported to the instant check system, but apparently more than half of all the states in the United States enter no records at all pertaining to these court determinations of mental illnesses. Currently, there are 25 percent of felony records as well as 90 percent of disqualifying mental health records that are not in the system. Very scary.

This bill is very necessary. Based on the above statistic, many dangerous people are still capable of getting their hands onto fire weapons due to the large amount of gaps in the United State's records.

SOURCE

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

PRnewswire