Lawmakers urge closing gaps in federal-state gun laws

WASHINGTON -- Grappling with the deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history, lawmakers said Sunday they want to eliminate a gap between state and federal laws that can allow someone with a history of mental illness to buy guns.

Members of Congress have shown little political appetite, however, for attempting to expand federal gun control in response to the massacre at Virginia Tech.

Seung-Hui Cho, who gunned down 32 people on campus and killed himself Monday, was evaluated at a psychiatric hospital in late 2005 and deemed by a judge to present "an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness." That should have disqualified him from purchasing a gun under federal law, experts say.

But Virginia court officials insist that because the judge ordered only outpatient treatment -- and did not commit Cho to a psychiatric hospital -- they were not required to submit the information to be entered in the federal databases for background checks.

Lawmakers pushed Sunday to eliminate such breakdowns. They called for uniformity between state and federal reporting to make background checks more dependable.