November 18, 2011 12:38 AM UTC

U.S. Senate holding hearings on gun violence

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• by: Raf

Today, the Senate is holding hearings featuring over 60 survivors of gun violence, as well as their family members. Notably, the group includes 13 survivors or family members of victims of the shooting spree at Cong. Gabby Giffords’s town hall. The aim of the hearings? To encourage lawmakers to close holes in the gun background check system.

Among those testifying? Anita Bañuelos, Sandra & Melinda Moses, and Jose Silva.

Anita’s cousin Jose Leyva was shot and killed in 1997. Jose was an innocent bystander hit by a bullet intended for someone else. Sandra’s son Steven Moses was shot in the back of the head as he was making a call from a phone booth in San Francisco in 1986. Melinda is Sandra’s daughter and Steven’s sister.

Jose’s childhood friend Wesley Kyle Tsinnijinnie was shot and killed at age 12 in 1994 by Gabriel Elk Castaway, an 18-year-old friend of Wesley’s. Jose has lost a number of friends to gun violence and has spoken out against gangs and violence.  He is a childhood friend of Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who is a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition.

Punctuating their visit is a report by Mayors Against Illegal Gun Violence that finds missing records could well be putting guns in the hands of killers. The report found that millions of records potentially identifing people as mentally ill or drug abusers are missing from the federal background check database  of slack reporting by state agencies.

The report also found that federal agencies are not reporting requirements to the background check system despite a law that requires all federal agencies report “any record of any person” who is prohibited from purchasing firearms to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Had rigorous application of that system been in place, Arizona’s Jared Loughner, the shooter at Giffords’s town hall, might not have been able to purchase the guns he used in that shooting spree.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg is also scheduled to deliver signatures from 350,000 people asking for the gun check system to be fixed.

The report also found, among other things, that:

– 23 states and the District of Columbia have submitted less than 100 mental health records to the federal database, and

– 17 states have submitted less than 10 mental health records and four states haven’t submitted any records at all.

On the substance abuse records side, 44 states submitted less than 10 records while 33 states haven’t turned in a single record.

The Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. You can read the full report here: http://mayorsagainstillegalgun…

(full disclosure: I’m doing outreach for Mayors Against Illegal Guns on this issue.)