Legal Complexities Stymie Data-Sharing on Dangerous Students
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WASHINGTON — Schools, doctors, and police often do not share information about potentially dangerous students because they can’t figure out complicated and overlapping privacy laws, according to a federal report released yesterday on the Virginia Tech shooting.
As a result, information that could be used to get troubled students counseling or prevent them from buying handguns never makes it to the appropriate agency, the report by three Cabinet agencies said.
President Bush ordered the report in April after Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty before taking his own life in what was the worst massacre in modern U.S. history.
Cho’s roommates noticed he had problems, his professors expressed concern about his violent writings, and a judge ordered him into treatment after describing the young man as a danger to himself and others.
But it’s unclear whether Cho received follow-up treatment, and because the court order never made it into a federal database, he was able to legally purchase two handguns to carry out the attack.
The report was released yesterday, just after the House passed the first major federal gun control law in over a decade. The bill would improve state reporting to a federal database used to block gun purchases by prohibited buyers.
