On May 20, 1999, the U.S. Senate approved the Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Accountability Act of 1999, which provides over one billion dollars a year for states to fight youth crime and includes a number of measures to regulate firearms.

The Senate-passed legislation includes a provision introduced by Senator Feinstein to place limits on bombmaking information. The amendment would make it a federal crime to teach or distribute information on how to make a bomb or other weapon of mass destruction if the distributor intends that the information be used to commit a federal violent crime or knows that the recipient intends to use the information to commit a federal violent crime.

"According to authorities, the perpetrators in the Littleton tragedy learned how to make their 30-plus bombs from bombmaking instructions posted on the Internet," Senator Feinstein said.  "Hundreds and hundreds of web sites contain instructions on how to build bombs, such as the Terrorists' Handbook. In the short time since the tragedy, there has been a steady stream of incidents of youths using the Internet to build bombs and threaten their use at school."

The measure has been endorsed the U.S. Justice Department and the explosives industry.  The measure has been passed through the Senate three times before by Senator Feinstein, twice unanimously and once by a vote of 94-0, only to be removed by joint House-Senate conference committees.