Before getting too excited about legislation that would identify the mentally disturbed in background checks now required for legitimate gun purchases from licensed dealers, one should realize that only those certified as a threat to themselves or others would be included.

In addition, there are a number of other ways even those who are so judged can get weapons and escape detection.

It would be nice to heap praise on the National Rifle Association, the lobbying arm of the firearms industry, for supporting any kind of effort to bring order out of the chaos of gun violence.

After all, the organization's decision to cooperate in the passage of the measure to prevent another Virginia Tech massacre is among the very few it has backed ever and should be recognized as a blow for law and order, if hardly a sign the gun lobby has seen the light of common sense.

But then given the fact the NRA is like the scorpion who convinces the frog to ferry him across the river only to sting his benefactor halfway there just because it is in his nature, one would hardly expect more.

This is a group, after all, that is almost always dedicated to protecting the sale of firearms from any regulation no matter what the circumstances.

Kudos for bringing about this almost unheard of consolation from the most virulently disagreeable and powerful lobbying group in the nation should go to longtime Democratic Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, a former member of the NRA's board, and the persistence of Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat who lost her husband to a deranged gunman on a Long Island Railroad commuter train 14 years ago. And don't forget public outrage over the laws that allowed this to happen. Even the NRA was backed down.

This collaboration between Republicans, Democrats and the NRA, which normally targets for re-election defeat any lawmaker who dares oppose it, in passing the first meaningful gun-control legislation in either house since the mid '90s couldn't have occurred before the young madman used the weapons he had bought legally to massacre 32 of his fellow students at Virginia Tech.

Had the current measure been in effect, he would have at least been identified in the background check required for purchases from licensed gun dealers after having been officially adjudicated a threat to himself.

But here's the rub. While in this instance the bill would have made it more difficult to get the firearms he needed for his insane attack on the innocent students and their professors, it would have done nothing to prevent him from obtaining them at any one of the numerous gun shows held almost weekly throughout his state.

At these bazaars, one can buy nearly any kind of weapon from a Saturday night special to a bazooka without having a background check or a cooling-off period.

This hole in the security system is big enough for a Sherman tank to drive through and a fully loaded one at that.

There is another avenue by which the marauding Seung-Hui Cho, and any nut for that matter, could have obtained the guns even with his inclusion on the "no no" gun list.

He could buy them from a legitimate dealer through a straw person who has no felony or mental-health record. It happens almost constantly in the U.S. and is the major source of weapons used in felonies, including homicides.

In fact, McCarthy concedes that while a new reporting law probably would not have helped her husband and five others killed by the commuter train nitwit who had not been officially judged a threat, she believes it would have snagged Cho.

Nearly anyone with any determination and a little money can easily pick one or two up on the huge black market in guns — one fueled by the mountain of firearms that seems to grow daily.

If the NRA and other gun support groups truly were serious about keeping weapons out of the hands of the bad guys and the psychopaths, they would support ending the gun-show exception and closing the other loopholes. Then they really would be worthy of the praise.

But as the scorpion replied when asked by the frog why he had stung him when now both of them would drown, it just isn't in their nature.

— Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.