FBI error failed to stop Charleston killer from acquiring a firearm, despite background check
Michael S. Schmidt for The New York Times reports:
The man accused of killing nine people in a historically black church in South Carolina last month should not have been able to buy the gun he used in the attack, the F.B.I. said Friday, in what was the latest acknowledgment of flaws in the national background check system.
A loophole in the system and an error by the F.B.I. allowed the man, Dylann Roof, to buy the .45-caliber handgun despite having previously admitted to drug possession, officials said.
Mr. Roof first tried to buy the gun on April 11, from a dealer in South Carolina. The F.B.I., which conducts background checks for gun sales, did not give the dealer approval to proceed with the purchase because the bureau needed to do more investigating about Mr. Roof’s s criminal history.
….In the case of Mr. Roof, the F.B.I. failed to gain access to a police report in which he admitted to having been in possession of a controlled substance, which would have disqualified him from purchasing the weapon. The F.B.I. said that confusion about where the arrest had occurred had prevented it from acquiring the arrest record in a timely fashion.
Read the full story at The New York Times.
