Today’s editorial: Will it take another massacre for states to follow federal gun regulations? (scroll to the end for a report on state compliance with requirement to submit names of people who are prohibited from owning firearms to a national database).

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Almost four years after a mentally ill gunman killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus, more than half the states have failed to comply with a federal law designed to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous, disturbed people. As a result, more than 2 million people who should not be able to buy guns could probably get one anyway.

That is, in a word, insane.

So we applaud an effort by U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer to try to prod states to follow the law. His bill would also finally plug a loophole that allows untold numbers of guns to be sold with no background check at all.

We don’t know all the reasons why states from Hawaii to Maine, Mississippi to New Jersey, have failed to comply with laws designed to protect people from potential killers. Considering that the relevant laws have been on the books as far back as the Gun Control Act of 1968, it’s hard to imagine what would qualify at this point as anything more than an utterly inadequate excuse.

The Gun Control Act bars various people from owning firearms, including felons, illegal drug users and individuals who have been officially deemed mentally defective or have been committed to a mental institution and have a dangerous mental illness. The names must be submitted to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, created in 1998 under the 1993 Brady Bill. Gun dealers use NICS to quickly check a buyer’s eligibility. After the Virginia Tech shooting, a federal law was passed to improve state reporting to the national database.

But The Associated Press last month found that nine states had failed to submit any names of mentally ill people in time for a deadline set three years ago. Another 17 states sent fewer than 25 names. And a review of federal records last August by The Brady Center, the National Center for State Courts and SEARCH-The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics found that 14 states failed to even provide a required estimate of how many records they haven’t submitted.

One that did submit an estimate, New Jersey, said it has more than 4,000 records, but it had provided just eight. Overall, it is estimated that more than 2 million records have yet to make it into the NICS database, based on responses from 42 of 56 states and territories.

Mr. Schumer’s bill would increase reporting requirements and strengthen penalties for states that fail to comply, threatening them with the loss of millions of dollars in Justice Department grants. Federal agencies, including the military, would have to certify that they’re in compliance, as well. And, in a long overdue reform, most private sellers of guns, including those at gun shows, would have to verify that buyers are not in the NICS database.

We’d like to think that even the staunchest proponents of gun rights would support Mr. Schumer’s bill. It seeks to better enforce laws that are on the books. It does not place an onerous burden on responsible gun owners. And it could save life, one of those unalienable rights that governments are formed to secure. A right that was around before there was a Second Amendment or even a U.S. Constitution. A government that fails to protect that is failing to do job one.

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