BOSTON -- Massachusetts has some of the toughest gun control laws in the country, but not when it comes to keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

NewsCenter 5's Sean Kelly reported Wednesday that a loophole in state law is putting everyone in unnecessary danger.

VIDEO: State Doesn't Share Mental Health Records With FBI

On the day after Christmas, 2000, seven co-workers were shot dead at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield, Mass. Michael "Mucko" McDermott gave Massachusetts and the nation an urgent incentive to keep guns away from the mentally ill.

"Unfortunately public policy typically does not change until there's a massacre and the legislature and the governor chose to ignore the Edgewater software nightmare as it relates to trying to prevent future massacres from gun violence by mentally ill people," said John Rosenthal, Cofounder, and Stop Handgun Violence.

Governors and legislators changed over time, but laws and policy did not. Not that other massacres didn't serve as a reminder. Thirty-three people killed at Virginia Tech. Six shot dead at Northern Illinois University.

All at the hands of the men once committed to mental institutions. But their names never made it into the FBI's database that would have alerted gun dealers to stop their gun purchases. 35 states contribute these records, but the Commonwealth is not one of them.

In Massachusetts, mentally ill people who have been committed by the courts to institutions are not in the FBI's database. So if they try to buy a gun, they're most likely going to be able to get one even though it's against the law. Blame it on a loophole in state law that makes it impossible to cross check their firearm applications with mental health records at private hospitals.

"I think it is a big problem only because so many of the people aren't necessarily adjudicated to a state facility," said Lee Police Chief Ron Glidden. Glidden and other chiefs across the Commonwealth tell Team 5 Investigates this hurts their ability to determine whether a person is mentally fit to carry a firearm.

"We're basically leaving it up to the word of somebody who may have a mental illness whether or not they actually got committed to a particular hospital," said Glidden.

Right now, it's up to the Department of Mental Health to help police conduct mental health background checks. But the state can only examine the records of its own hospitals making the checks worthless since the vast majority of patients are treated at private facilities.

Mental Health Advocates like Laurie Martinelli don't want to see that change. "Should the state of Massachusetts report to the FBI people with mental illnesses?" asked Kelly. "Absolutely not," said Martinelli. "Why not?" asked Kelly. "If there's any change that such a singling out of the mentally ill would inhibit their ability to get treatment because they don't want to be on some national database. That is a bad thing," said Martinelli.

But it is federal law. And John Grossman, Undersecretary for Forensic Sciences and Technology at the Executive Office of Public Safety, is heading up a task force to make sure Massachusetts starts following it. "Why has it taken so long for this to get worked out?" asked Kelly. "Well the problems aren't simple unfortunately. We have very strong privacy laws on one hand that prohibit us from revealing information and the information is not all in one place in MA," said Grossman.

Other obstacles include the high cost of transferring thousands of court records, and confusion over who exactly should be disqualified from purchasing guns.

"We're looking at whether there are changes we can make without changing the law because as you know the legislative cycle is not always as fast as everyone would like," said Grossman.

No one knows that better than State Rep. David Linsky. He's introduced several bills to reform gun laws but none of them have passed. "The gun lobby in Massachusetts is very strong. Legislators don't like to deal with the issue of guns and there's a perception out there that MA gun laws are already strong enough, if not too strong," said Linsky.

Even Jim Wallace, Executive Director, Gun Owners' Action League, who lobbies for gun owners is agreeable to some record sharing, with limitations. "I would be comfortable with a situation where if you could clearly define what a dangerous person is as far as a mental illness. This is a civil right and if you're going to remove somebody's civil rights you have to have a very clear cut case as to why you want to do that," said Wallace.

State officials told Team 5 Investigates they don't know when they're going to resolve these issues and start reporting names to the FBI's database. When they do, it still won't prevent unstable people from illegally purchasing guns.