FBI: Gunman should not have been allowed to buy weapon

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The gunman charged in the Charleston, S.C., church massacre should not have been allowed to purchase the weapon used in the attack, FBI Director James Comey said Friday as he outlined a series of “heartbreaking” missed opportunities and background-check flaws that allowed the transaction to take place.

“We are all sick that this has happened,” Comey told reporters at an unusual, hastily scheduled meeting at FBI headquarters. “We wish we could turn back time, because from this vantage point, everything seems obvious. But we cannot.”

He said he had ordered a review into what happened and that FBI officials would meet Friday with victims’ relatives to explain the errors.

The cascading set of problems began with the drug-related arrest of Dylann Roof in South Carolina weeks before the shooting, touching off miscommunication between local and federal officials and revealing potential shortcomings in the government’s background-check process.

At issue was a police report from Roof’s arrest in which authorities say he admitted possessing illegal drugs. Under federal rules, that admission alone would have been enough to disqualify him from an April gun purchase even though he wasn’t convicted of the charge.

But, Comey said, the FBI background check examiner who evaluated Roof’s gun purchase order never saw the arrest report because the wrong arresting agency was listed on state criminal history records. Had the West Virginia-based examiner seen the police report, the purchase would have been denied, Comey said.

The purchase order was on hold for three days as the FBI examiner tried to figure out if it should be approved or rejected. Once that window closed without a clear answer, the gun dealer used its legal discretion to complete the transaction.

Comey said he learned about the problem Thursday night and had directed an internal 30-day review into the situation and the FBI’s background check process more generally.

“It may be a series of highly improbable events coming together, but this was a gun that was used to murder nine good people. So it’s very important to me that we understand what we can learn from this,” Comey said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, condemned the errors.

“It’s disastrous that this bureaucratic mistake prevented existing laws from working and blocking an illegal gun sale,” Grassley said. “The facts undercut attempts to use the tragedy to enact unnecessary gun laws.”

Roof has been charged with murder in the June 17 slayings of nine people inside a historic black church in Charleston.