Byline: Peter Hardin
Aug. 3--WASHINGTON -- Two weeks before students return to classes at Virginia Tech, a Senate panel voted yesterday to strengthen the national instant background-check system for gun buyers.
Responding to the Virginia Tech massacre, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to advance a measure aimed at closing gaps in the national background-check system.
The panel also authorized spending $400 million a year over five years to help states automate their lists of convicted criminals and the mentally ill who are barred under federal law from buying firearms, and to report the lists to the FBI's background-check system.
That sum was ...