"This bill will make America safer without affecting the rights of a single law-abiding citizen," said the Senate's chief sponsor, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "I hope the president immediately signs this essential legislation."
Both the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the National Rifle Association agreed on the bill. If it passes, gun dealers will be allowed to check mental health records reported to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
One person behind the eight-month stalemate was Republican Sen. Tom Coburn. His greatest concern "was that [the bill] did not pay for successful appeals by veterans or other people who say they are wrongly barred from buying a gun," he said.
One viewpoint against the bill, however, is that "in forging compromise with the gun lobby, the bill's authors unintentionally imposed an unnecessary burden on government agencies by freeing up thousands of people to buy guns," says the Associated Press.
"Rather than focusing on improving the current laws prohibiting people with certain mental health disabilities from buying guns, the bill is now nothing more than a gun lobby wish list," said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center. "It will waste millions of taxpayers' dollars restoring the gun privileges of persons previously determined to present a danger to themselves or others."
However, Pelosi reminded listeners of why the bill was proposed: "The tragic shooting at Virginia Tech in April starkly demonstrated that serious gaps exist in the transmittal of background records, allowing thousands of people who are barred from acquiring guns to escape proper background checks."
On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and himself at Virginia Tech, using two guns he had purchased. While his "documented history of mental illness" should have kept him from buying a gun, the records were never forwarded on to the national background check system.
