[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 140 (Monday, October 30, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11374-S11377]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. LOTT (for Mr. Ashcroft):
  S. 3264. A bill to ensure that individuals with histories of mental 
illness and other persons prohibited from owning or possessing firearms 
are stopped from buying firearms by requiring instant background checks 
prior to making a firearms purchase, and for other purposes; to the 
Committee on the Judiciary.


              the records access improvements act of 2000

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, issues surrounding possession and 
ownership of firearms have been some of the most divisive in this 
legislative session and political season. Americans hold a wide range 
of differing opinions regarding gun rights and responsibilities, and 
the proper balance of those rights against the need for public safety. 
But, despite the larger differences, most Americans agree that there 
are common sense actions that can be implemented to protect the rights 
of law-abiding citizens while preventing those with criminal records or 
histories of violent behavior from access to firearms.
  I support the provision in federal law that prohibits certain people 
from owning or possessing firearms. Under current law, certain 
categories of persons are unable to purchase guns. These include 
felons, fugitives from justice, illegal aliens, the mentally 
incompetent, and persons convicted of crimes of domestic violence. 
These proscriptions protect law-abiding citizens from those who have 
demonstrated they cannot use firearms responsibly. This law protects 
law-abiding gun owners because the fewer people who criminally misuse 
guns, the less sentiment that there will be to impose more restrictions 
on lawful gun owners.
  In 1994, the Congress passed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention 
Act that instituted a system to check whether a prospective gun 
purchaser, prior to the transfer of a firearms, is ineligible to 
possess a gun because he or she falls into one of the nine prohibited 
categories. The permanent phase (phase II) of the Brady Act--that went 
into effect November 30, 1998--requires an instant background check be 
done on the buyer when a firearm is purchased from a licensed dealer. 
Either the State or the Federal Government conducts this check. This is 
to ensure that those prohibited by federal law from owning guns do not 
purchase them. It makes sense, and although the legislation was passed 
before I arrived in the Senate, I support the instant background check.
  Since the implementation of the Brady Act in 1994, through the end of 
calendar year 1999, 22 million background checks have been conducted on 
potential firearms purchasers. Of that 22 million, more than 536,000 
individuals were determined ineligible. And since phase II of the Brady 
Act went into effect in 1998--mandating Instant Background Checks in 
place of checks with a mandatory waiting period--more than 8.6 million 
requests for instant checks were received, with 2.4 percent of 
applicants being denied.
  I would note that unfortunately, this Administration has chosen not 
to prosecute those felons for attempting to buy a gun, which is a 
federal crime. Federal prosecutions have fallen at the same time 
background checks have given law enforcement a reliable tool for 
tracking down and locking up criminals trying to buy guns. In 1993, the 
Clinton-Gore Administration prosecuted 633 people for trying to 
illegally purchase a gun. That fell to 279 in 1997 and rose to 405 in 
1999. From 1994 to 1999, the Administration prosecuted an average of 
404 defendants for violations of the gun purchasing law annually--a 36-
percent drop from 1993. Obviously, we need to prosecute felons who are 
attempting to illegally buy guns.

  But there is another hole in the current law. While the federal 
database of state criminal records is fairly comprehensive, the same 
cannot be said of

[[Page S11377]]

mental incompetency records. Forty-one states, including the State of 
Missouri, do not permit records of the criminally insane to be searched 
prior to a firearm sale. This is a travesty. The result of this 
loophole is that individuals prohibited from purchasing firearms 
because of mental impairment are allowed to slip through the cracks--
often with tragic results.
  In April of this year, the New York Times did a series of four 
articles on what they termed as ``rampage'' killings--multiple-victim 
killings that were not primarily domestic or connected to a robbery or 
gang. The New York Times examined 102 killers in 100 rampage attacks in 
a computer-assisted study including the shooting in 1999 at Columbine 
High School in Littleton, Colorado, a day-trading firm in Atlanta, and 
a church in Fort Worth, Texas. The New York Times study found that at 
least half of the killers showed signs of serious mental health 
problems, and at least eight had been involuntarily committed. These 
articles highlight the difficulty of enforcing the provision of our gun 
control laws that prohibits people who have been involuntarily 
committed to mental institutions from buying a handgun.
  For example, Gracie Verduzco, was a 35-year-old paranoid 
schizophrenic who believed she had a transmitter in her left ear that 
received messages from a satellite and had been involuntarily 
hospitalized in Arizona twice. In addition, she had been committed to a 
mental hospital by a judge in the District of Columbia after she had 
threatened President Clinton. Despite three involuntary commitments, 
she was able to buy a .38-caliber revolver at a pawnshop in Tucson, 
Arizona by lying on her gun application. She used it to kill one person 
and wound four others there on May 21, 1998.
  According to the Justice Department, about 150,000 people a year are 
committed to mental institutions by court order in the United States. 
In total, there are now perhaps 2.7 million people who have been 
involuntarily committed at some point in their lives and are therefore 
barred by the federal law from buying a handgun. In response to some of 
the highly publicized cases, authorities in nine states have allowed 
law enforcement agencies some form of access to mental health records. 
And the number of ineligible individuals who attempt to purchase guns 
has been alarming. According to the Illinois State police, 3,699 people 
were turned down in Illinois from 1996 to 1998, when records showed 
they had been either voluntarily or involuntarily committed within the 
last 5 years, the legal test under Illinois law. An additional 5,585 
people who were hospitalized from 1996 to 1998 were found to already 
possess gun permits, which as a result, were revoked.
  The New York Times reported, ``But at the national level, as in most 
states, there has been no comparable effort to create access to court 
commitment records for gun checks. That lack of action is in stark 
contrast to the long effort by gun control groups and the Clinton 
administration in winning enactment of the Brady law to create 
databases screening out convicted felons, who like the involuntarily 
committed, were barred by the 1968 law from handgun purchases.''
  If we are serious about reducing the criminal misuse of firearms, 
this has to change. Federal law already makes the purchase or 
possession of firearms illegal for people the courts deem mentally 
incompetent, but the law is difficult, if not impossible to enforce 
because mental-health information is not currently part of 
computerized, instant background checks. That's why today I introduce 
the Records Access Improvement Act, to encourage states to make certain 
mental health information available to the National Instant Criminal 
Background Check System (NICS).
  At present, the instant check system is administered jointly by the 
states and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 15 states, state 
agencies serve as points of contact (POCs), and conduct full background 
checks for both long guns and handguns. In 11 states, state agencies 
conduct partial background checks for handguns only. In POC states, 
federal firearm licensees contact the state agency, rather than the 
FBI. In non-POC States, Federal firearm licensees contact the FBI 
directly through the NICS system. Over half of the applications for 
firearm transfers were checked directly by the FBI, while the remainder 
of applications were checked by State or local agencies.
  In February 2000, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported 
that the identification of non-felons ineligible to purchase firearms 
is likely to remain problematic under NICS. The Bureau of Justice 
Statistics stated that new enabling statutes may be required to 
identify and access such information.
  The legislation I am introducing today is such a statute. 
Specifically, this bill will encourage states to make the information 
available to the NICS system by tying the receipt of grants made under 
the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund to the provision of relevant 
data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This bill will ensure that 
the NICS system is as complete as possible, so that the Instant 
Background Check will be as reliable as possible. The Federal gun law--
the Brady Act--makes it clear that certain persons are ineligible to 
purchase firearms. It is time that we take the steps necessary for 
enforcement of the law. This bill is a giant step toward reaching that 
goal.

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