More states are sending records to a federal database of mentally ill people barred from owning guns, but the mental-health database is far from complete, the FBI has said

Illinois is one of the states that began sending mental-health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), but Steven Kazmierczak, the gunman who killed five students at Northern Illinois University, was not in the database, according to Stephen Fischer of the FBI.

"We're missing 80 to 90% of the mentally ill," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, noting that states send records only after a court has committed individuals for involuntary psychiatric treatment or found them to be dangerous to themselves or others. Kazmierczak, 27, had been seeing a psychiatrist before the rampage, but was doing so voluntarily.

Level: A2