The US Congress has passed a measure to prevent people with a history of mental illness from buying guns.

The bill must be signed by the President George W Bush, and clarifies what mental health records can be used to help gun dealers decide whether to sell someone a firearm.

The bill is a response to the killings at Virginia Tech University in April when a student shot dead 32 people.

The US Congress hopes that this bill, with its emphasis on background checks on a national data base, could prevent something similiar happening again and help reduce the loss of life in a country where 30,000 people die from gun wounds every year.

If passed into law, it would be the first major new gun control measure in the US since the presidency of Bill Clinton a decade ago.

- BBC