Mike Levin: “I bring the National Instant Criminal Background Check Improvement Act, formerly called the Our Lady of Peace Act, to…”

“I bring the National Instant Criminal Background Check Improvement Act, formerly called the Our Lady of Peace Act, to the attention of my colleagues. On March 12, 2002, a priest and a parishioner were killed at the Our Lady of Peace Church in Lynbrook, NY, by a man who was able to obtain a gun despite the fact that he had a prior disqualifying mental health commitment and a restraining order that should have prevented him from purchasing a gun. The man who committed this double murder passed a Brady background check because the NICS database did not have the necessary information to determine that he was ineligible to purchase a firearm. The NICS Improvement Act would provide funding to fix the hole in the current NICS background check system caused by the failure of many states to computerize and update their criminal history records. This bill would provide $1 billion to help States do just that. This is not a small problem.”