US senators reach deal on gun-sale background checks

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Senators struck a hard-fought compromise that could expand US background checks to all commercial firearms sales, which may result in the most ambitious change to gun laws since 1994.

The deal comes four months after a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which left 20 young children and six adults dead and took America's epidemic of gun violence to an alarming new level.

"We have an agreement... on an amendment to prevent criminals and the mentally ill and insane from getting firearms," said Democrat Joe Manchin, from the pro-gun state of West Virginia, as he unveiled the measure.

The amendment would see background checks -- the core of President Barack Obama's gun control push -- expanded to include all sales at gun shows and on the Internet, said Manchin and Republican Pat Toomey, the deal's architects.

Despite falling short of the president's proposal for universal background checks, Obama noted the "significant bipartisan progress" of the compromise while warning that much work remains.

"Congress needs to finish the job," the president said.