Virginia Governor may close gun law loophole

? Virginia’s governor said Tuesday he may be able to single-handedly close the loophole that allowed a mentally ill Cho Seung-Hui to buy the guns he used to kill 32 people at Virginia Tech.

Federal law bars the sale of guns to people who have been judged mentally defective. But it is up to states to report their legal proceedings to the federal government for inclusion in the database used to do background checks on prospective gun buyers.

In Cho’s case, a special justice ordered outpatient psychiatric counseling for him in 2005 after determining he was a danger to himself. But because Cho was never committed to a mental hospital, that order was never entered in the database.

Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said in a radio interview that he may be able to tighten that reporting requirement by issuing an executive order.

“This is the magnet we’re all really focusing on. This grabbed our attention,” Kaine said later in the day in an interview with The Associated Press.

Similarly, the chairman of a panel appointed by Kaine to review the massacre said the reporting requirement must be tightened.

“It’s pretty clear: He should not have been able to obtain a weapon,” said retired Virginia State Police Superintendent W. Gerald Massengill.

The governor also met in suburban Washington with Korean-American leaders to assure them that Virginians do not hold people of Korean descent responsible for the tragedy. Cho was a 23-year-old South Korean immigrant who came to the U.S. at about age 8 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C.

“I can assure you that no one in Virginia – no one in Virginia – views the Korean community as culpable in this incident in the least degree,” Kaine said. He also said Virginia “would be a weaker place, Virginia would be a lesser place, if it were not for the contributions of our Korean-American citizens.”

The Virginia Korean leaders asked Kaine to boost mental-health funding for immigrants and their families.

One pastor in the Korean-American community said that well before the massacre, Cho’s mother had been going from church to church looking for someone to counsel her troubled son.

“They went around seeking help for their son ever since he stopped talking 10 years ago,” said Bong-han Kim, an assistant pastor at the One Mind Church of Washington in Springfield.