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In addition to mandating the sharing of mental health records, the legislation would require that states improve their computerized record-keeping for felony records and domestic violence restraining orders and convictions, which also are supposed to bar people from purchasing guns.
The FBI, which maintains the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, has not taken a position on the bill, but the bureau is blunt about what adding names to its database would do.
"The availability of this information will save lives," the FBI said in a recent report.
Since 1998, when the NICS replaced a five-day waiting period before a gun could be delivered to the purchaser, more than 53 million background checks for gun sales have been conducted. According to the FBI report, more than 850,000 sales have been denied. In most of those cases, the applicant was denied the purchase because he or she had a criminal record.
Legislation sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., says millions of records are either missing or incomplete.
And, as McCarthy noted, "The computer is only as good as the information you put in it."
Only 21 of the 50 states provide NICS at least some names of people with serious mental illness, a disqualifier for gun purchases under federal law since 1968. Iowa, we were pleased to note, is one of the 21. Others are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.
Alabama joined the list in 2004 after a man with a history of mental illness -a history that included two involuntary commitments -killed two police officers with a rifle he bought on Christmas Eve. The shootings led Alabama lawmakers to share with the FBI the names of people who have been committed involuntarily on the way to mental institutions.
Legislation similar to that introduced by McCarthy in the current Congress did not pass Congress in 2002 and 2004 when it was opposed by some advocates for the mentally ill and some gun rights groups.
If there is any validity to the old saw about the third time being a charm, Congress will send the law to President Bush for his signature in 2006. It should.
