Gabby Giffords – Mark Kelly statement on FBI announcement that alleged Charleston shooter shouldn’t have passed a background check

July 10, 2015

July 10, 2015 – Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and retired Navy combat veteran and NASA astronaut Captain Mark Kelly, the Co-Founders of the gun violence prevention organization Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS), issued the below statement following today’s disclosure by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Dylann Roof, the individual accused of shooting and killing nine congregants at Charleston, South Carolina’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church on June 17, 2015, was legally prohibited from buying or owning guns, but nevertheless was allowed to purchase the gun authorities say was used in the shooting :

“We are deeply troubled to learn details of the failures that allowed the perpetrator of last month’s tragedy in Charleston to buy a gun that he shouldn’t have had access to. Federal law identified the killer as a prohibited possessor. But he nonetheless fell through the cracks. That failure paved the way for the massacre of nine men and women in a church basement. ”We need a full investigation into how Dylann Roof was able to walk into a gun store and pass a background check he should have failed. We call on the Attorney General, the FBI Director, both houses of Congress, and the Governor of South Carolina to work together to determine what went wrong and lay out specific steps we can take to ensure such failures don’t repeat themselves. ”Working to keep guns out of the hands of the most dangerous people is a project all Americans – Republicans and Democrats, gun owners and those who aren’t – can come together to support.”

Background on the Alleged Shooter’s Gun Purchase:

In March 2015, Dylann Roof was arrested and charged with felony drug possession. While the case was pending, Roof tried to buy a gun from a dealer outside Columbia, South Carolina on April 11, 2015. According to The Wall Street Journal, on April 13, 2015, the NICS federal background check was assigned to an FBI examiner in West Virginia, but the examiner did not have the arrest record that showed that Roof had actually admitted to possessing the drugs during his March arrest – an admission that should have barred Roof from buying a gun under federal law.

The examiner reached out to the West Columbia police and county law enforcement and in the meantime, the firearm request fell into the “delayed pending” status that went past the three day waiting period for firearms purchases.

With no word from the FBI examiner, the local gun dealer legally allowed Roof’s purchase to go forward on April 16, 2015. According to the FBI Director James Comey, the examiner missed the key fact in Roof’s record due to a complicated layout of police jurisdiction in Columbia. The weapon that Roof purchased was the one allegedly used in the shooting at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church

Background on Federal Law and Background Checks:

In 1993, Congress passed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act into law, making background checks a requirement for federally licensed gun dealers and setting up the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), a system of databases maintained by the FBI.

When a person attempts to purchase a gun from a licensed dealer, the dealer runs a check through the NICS system to determine whether a potential buyer is prohibited from purchasing firearms. If information in NICS indicates that a person is prohibited from legally purchasing a firearm, the dealer must deny the sale.

Under federal law, if a firearms dealer has not been notified within three business days that the sale would violate federal or state law, the sale can proceed by default.

Since the NICS background check system was put into place in 1994, over 196 million background checks have been conducted and the system has denied sales to over 2.4 million people who are prohibited from legally purchasing firearms. The vast majority of NICS checks are completed instantaneously.