No. 2 Senate Republican John Cornyn to introduce background check bill
Senator John Cornyn speaking at the 2012 CPAC in Washington, D.C. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Texas Senator John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said on Tuesday that he plans to introduce legislation to ensure federal agencies put required criminal records into a national database, after a shooting on Sunday in which 26 people were killed in a church.


"I plan to introduce legislation ... to ensure that all federal departments and agencies, including the Department of Defense, upload the required conviction records into the national database," Cornyn said in a statement.

The gunman in the Texas shooting had been convicted by court-martial in 2012 of assaulting his first wife and stepson during his stint in the U.S. Air Force, but the Air Force did not enter the conviction into an FBI database used during background checks.

(Reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Eric Walsh)