I wish you could have been in the room with me today.

Fourteen surviving family members and injured survivors of the Virginia Tech massacre stood inside Room S-115 of the U.S. Capitol this morning and faced their pain in a very public way.

They displayed tremendous personal strength, and directed their anguish not toward revenge, but instead to public service. They advocated for a bill pending in Congress that would come too late for themselves or their children, but that might save others from the fate they suffered. These individuals came to Washington, D.C. to deliver a letter signed by over 50 in their same position, a letter that calls on the U.S. Congress to stop dragging their feet.

It is time to pass the NICS Improvement Act of 2007 and send it to the President for his signature.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Peter Read said it succinctly. His daughter, Mary Karen Read, was murdered at Virginia Tech. Today at the Capitol he declared, “We are here today with a very simple message: Pass this bill. Send it to the President’s desk. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.â€�

“We need Congress to help make some good come out of a tremendous evil,â€� Col. Read said, “so we can all be confident that Mary and our other loved ones didn’t die in vain.â€�

Exactly six months ago today on April 16 – a date the families call their “personal 9/11� – scores of lives on the Virginia Tech campus were shattered. A half-year has passed since a deranged gunman swept through the West Ambler Johnston dormitory, and then Norris Hall, shooting over 170 rounds of ammunition with two semi-automatic handguns that he purchased at gun stores. He murdered 32 and wounded over 17 others.

In Congress, nothing has been passed into law since then in response to this tragedy.

Though the shooter was found by a court to be a danger to himself to due to mental illness – and thus prohibited from legally purchasing firearms by the gun Control Act of 1968 – he passed two background checks and walked out of two guns stores fully armed. Had the NICS background check system had complete information, the shooter would have been denied the approval to purchase those guns.

The NICS Improvement Act is designed to help prevent a tragedy like this. It will result in the placement of records of hundreds of thousands of people who are already considered “prohibited purchasers� because they have been adjudicated dangerously mentally ill into the background check system, and thus make future tragedies like Virginia Tech less likely.

As president of the Brady Campaign, I was humbled to stand today with the families and survivors of the Virginia Tech shooting. Their stories were heart-rending and their actions today were a courageous, and selfless, act of public service.

Congress must hear their voices, and heed their call.

It is time for Congress to pass the NICS Improvement Act of 2007 and send it to President Bush for his signature.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)