AUGUSTA – Before Gov. John Baldacci could sign it into law, Maine lawmakers recalled a bill that would have made it harder for people judged mentally ill to buy guns.

The bill, however, is still alive and is being carried over to next year’s legislative session.

The House and Senate recalled the bill after passing it and sending it to Baldacci before the session closed in late June because it would have conflicted with existing and proposed federal laws.

That could have risked a loss of public safety funding from the federal government, according to state officials.

The Legislature’s action is being criticized by gun-control advocates, who said lawmakers passed up a chance to make Maine safer by keeping guns out of the hands of people who are too dangerous to have them.

“We have created a culture here in which there is so much anxiety and concern about doing too much to regulate guns that we do nothing,” said William Harwood of Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence.

Assistant House Majority Leader Sean Faircloth, D-Bangor, presented his bill to the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee in May, a month to the day after shootings at Virginia Tech left 33 people dead. In that case the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, had been judged a danger to himself by a court in 2005.

The gist of Faircloth’s bill – requiring the state to give the FBI data about mentally ill people who are hospitalized involuntarily after a court hearing – presented no conflict with federal laws.

However, conflicts with an existing federal law dealing with reinstatement of gun-ownership rights and with a proposed law dealing with the appeals process in those cases surfaced before the June 21 close of the session.

The criminal justice committee plans to revamp the bill before the 2008 legislative session.