(AP)
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The husband of an Alabama college professor accused of shooting her colleagues says the couple went to a shooting range weeks before the killing but he didn't know where she got the gun.

James Anderson told The Associated Press Monday that he did not know how long Amy Bishop had a gun before Friday's attack. He says the family did not own a gun.

Bishop is accused of opening fire at a faculty meeting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, killing three and wounding three.

Anderson says she was acting like "a normal professor" in the days before the shooting.

He also says he and his wife were cleared in the investigation of a pipe bomb sent to one of her former bosses in Massachusetts in 1993.

Jason Morris, president of EmployeeScreenIQ, a Cleveland, Ohio, company that does background checks for colleges and other large institutions, said it's possible a background check would not have turned up the incidents in Bishop's past, particularly since she wasn't charged.

Part of the problem is that college professors often come to campus with very lofty credentials, like Bishop's degree from Harvard University, Morris said.

"Sometimes they overlook certain characteristics because they've got this great person coming to campus," Morris said.

"It's not a silver bullet," he said of background checks, but a check of weapons records "might have uncovered something."

Police previously said Bishop had no permit for the gun believe used in the shooting, and investigators said they didn't know where she got it. The gun was found in a second-floor restroom, one floor below where the shooting occurred.

Bishop's husband told the Chronicle of Higher Education on Monday that her wife had recently borrowed a handgun and had practiced with it at an indoor gun range. He said she wouldn't tell him who she borrowed it from and was 'very cagey.'