FBI Background Check ‘Mistake’ Allowed Charleston Shooter To Illegally Buy Gun

An FBI background check error may have allowed a mass murderer illegal access to a gun.

FBI Director James Comey has just announced that a “mistake” in the background check system allowed Dylann Roof to purchase a gun in April. Roof three weeks ago walked into a Charleston, South Carolina church, sat with members of a Bible study class for an hour, and then shot to death nine of them. 

“We are all sick that this happened,” Mr. Comey said. “We wish we could turn back time.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the “FBI began a background check, but a federal examiner didn’t obtain a report on a Columbia, S.C., arrest record from March 1 that showed he had admitted to using drugs. That should have disqualified him from buying a firearm. But Mr. Comey described a complicated city and county jurisdictional arrangement in the Columbia area that made it difficult for the FBI examiner to unearth the record.”

The FBI examiner is “obviously heartbroken and struggling, as you might imagine,” Comey noted.

The New York Times adds that this is not the first time an error in the FBI background check program, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, led to a mass murder.

“After a 2007 shooting in which 33 people died at Virginia Tech University, investigators discovered that the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, also should not have been able to buy a gun because a court had previously declared him to be a danger to himself,” the Times reports. “The shooting led to legislation aimed at improving the background check system.”

The stunning revelation of the error in the Roof background check comes the very same day the Confederate flag was removed from the South Carolina Statehouse, largely in response to Roof’s massacre. Two Internet sleuths shortly after the murders unearthed images of the 21-year old white supremacist posing with Confederate flags, making that symbol even more toxic than ever.

 

Image: Screenshot via NBC News