Virginia led the nation in reporting names to a federal database barring the mentally ill from buying guns shortly after the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history.
Now, other states appear to be following suit since the April 16 tragedy, according to figures released by Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Thursday that show the number of names on the list has doubled.
Virginia had given 81,233 names to the FBI’s database, according to a tally several weeks after the massacre, when deranged gunman Sueng-Hui Cho, a Virginia Tech student from Centreville, shot and killed 32 students and faculty before taking his own life at the Blacksburg campus. Cho had bought two guns despite receiving a court order for outpatient mental health treatment in 2005.
Michigan ranked second at the time, having reported 73,382 names.
“Obviously, Virginia was one of the few states that was reporting names; certainly a number of them were not prior to the Virginia Tech tragedy,” said Tucker Martin, spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell. “States are stepping up and following Virginia’s lead.”
The number of names has increased to 393,957 since July, when the database held 174,863 names, Mukasey said during a speech in Park City, Utah, Thursday. Most of that increase came from California, which had only 27 names on the list by April 30. It has since added more than 200,000 names.
The Justice Department did not release further details about the number of names individual states, including Virginia, have provided the database.
The attorney general nevertheless expressed dissatisfaction that all states weren’t participating in the database, which is used to screen potential gun-buyers. Only 32 states report names of the mentally ill, according to records.
“We’re making progress, and I hope that even more states will submit this information so that the national instant background check system can be maximally effective,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
