Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said he will file a bill that would "incentivize" gun background checks by state agencies and force the federal government to upload information about law infractions into the National Instant Criminal Background Checks System.
The bill would get the federal government to comply with existing background check laws after a Texas gunman, who should have been prevented from buying a firearm under current statutes, killed 26 people and wounded 20 others, The Washington Post reported.
Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, fired hundreds of rounds from an assault rifle in the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs on Sunday, in what is being called the worst mass shooting in state history, CBS News reported.
"As each new detail emerges from what is still an ongoing investigation (in Sunday's shooting), we need to study the whole puzzle, ask ourselves how did this happen, why so many lives were lost and what if anything could have been done to prevent it," said a statement on Cornyn’s website.
"I plan to introduce legislation… to ensure that all federal departments and agencies, including the Department of Defense, upload the required conviction records into the national database. According to the Department of Justice, the number of these records that are actually uploaded is staggeringly low. That is unacceptable and it must change," the senator from Texas said.
Cornyn said he had previously introduced the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act, a bill that would encourage states and agencies to upload more mental health records into NICS and to improve crisis response by law enforcement.
The Washington Examiner reported that Kelley was able to purchase a weapon despite a 2014 domestic assault conviction that the Air Force said it erroneously failed to report.
"We need to better understand why our existing laws didn't work in this instance and that's what my proposed legislation will do," Cornyn said.
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