WASHINGTON — The man accused of killing nine people in an historically black South Carolina church last month should not have been able to buy a gun, the F.B.I. said Friday in what was the latest acknowledgment of flaws in the national background check system.
A loophole in the check system allowed the man, Dylann Roof, to buy the .45-caliber handgun despite his having previously admitted to drug possession, the bureau said.
“We are all sick this happened,” said the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey. “We wish we could turn back time.”
Mr. Roof now faces murder charges in a case that investigators say was racially motivated. Mr. Roof, who is white, is charged with killing nine people at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston.
The F.B.I. operates the background check system, called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and loopholes have been discovered in it before. One allowed thousands of prohibited buyers to legally purchase firearms over the past decade — and some of those weapons were ultimately used in crimes, according to court records and government documents. That problem stemmed from the three-day period the government has to determine whether someone is eligible to buy a gun.
More at the NY Slimes
This is the second time they’ve wrongly allowed a mass murderer to obtain weapons. What’s the point of having a stronger system that isn’t properly administered?
All the laws on the books don’t mean a thing if they aren’t enforced.
And we just have paper-pushers who would rather take it easy on themselves.
When I was an assistant to a chief of police I was in charge of doing the background checks before city gun permits were approved by the chief.
(Seal Beach, CA., in the 1960’s)
I took it pretty seriously.
So did the chief.
As a result, criminal types would use a fake ID and get their guns as though they lived in another city.
@Nanny G, #1:
It doesn’t sound like an example of a “paper-pusher who would rather take it easy” to me. It sounds to me like the full process was followed by all concerned, but an honest error was made because of a peculiarity of jurisdictional boundaries. The Wall Street Journal explains what happened in detail:
@Greg:
Right.
And police in West Columbia, upon learning the zip code of said Roof, would have immediately told the FBI to call the other jurisdiction.
Please don’t be that insulting, WSJ.
Police know what zip codes they cover.
Even substations know which zip codes they cover.
WSJ is carrying water for the FBI or lazy.
One or the other.
@Greg:
Yeah…so it is okay if it was “honest” incompetence…
I know…let’s put these “honestly incompetent” bureaucrats in charge of the entire medical system in this country!
Maybe we need more, stricter, more oppressive gun control restrictions that the lackadaisical, never-held-accountable, wasteful, incompetent government employees can ignore or fail to apply.
@Greg: I hope, Greg, you read my address to you on the post on Kate Steinle’s death. You accuse others of exploiting these tragedies yet here is a clear case of Obama exploiting Roof’s murder spree to push for more and more strict gun ownership restrictions when the actual problem lies in the implementation of the laws already in place; laws that would have done exactly what you leftists say you want them to do. All we need to add to the recipe is taxpayer-paid employees who will effectively do their jobs.
@Bill, #5:
You’re seriously suggesting that Trump’s rant following a random shooting, however tragic, is somehow the equivalent of Obama’s thoughtful comments following an act of racially motivated domestic terrorism?
Dylann Roof:
The quote comes from the text that was posted to his webpage.
The one thing that the two incidents do have in common is a firearm in the hands of someone who shouldn’t have had access to them. There are simply too damn many guns in circulation. I think they should be harder to acquire.
You don’t actually know a goddamn thing about the competence or dedication of the FBI employee who was involved in this situation.
@Greg:
Greg, we absolutely do know the FBI agent involved was not competent enough, or dedicated enough, to do what the law required, and through this failure the animal Roof was able to get a gun.
We also know that the incompetence, indifference, and complete lack of dedication of politicians with regard to border security has resulted in 122+ homicides by illegal aliens against US citizens, just since Obama has been in office.
You leftists rant about taking guns away from law abiding citizens because criminals use guns, and believe that is reasonable policy to punish innocents. Yet securing the border against ILLEGAL, criminal aliens – people actually committing crimes – is mean and racist.
Leftism truly is a mental disorder.
@Greg:
Trump’s “rant”? You mean answers to provocative questions? You mean saying, “see, I told you”? As compared to “that could be my son” or using the tragedy to promote MORE gun control when, as we see, what we really need is more governmental competence? “Thoughtful comments” such as continuing to promoting racial hatred at the funeral of those killed by Roof?
They are, my ignorant sycophant, difficult to acquire. Again, had the government officials done their job, Roof would not have gotten his weapon. Had the ACLU not successfully blocked the capability to institutionalize someone with mental problems in Connecticut, Adam Lanza would not have been free to commit his slaughter at Sandy Hook. Had the sheriff of Tuscon not allowed one of his employees to talk him out of jailing Loughner for violent crimes, he would not have been available to shoot Gabby Gifford and kill six others. Over and over, killers are allowed to walk free due to bleeding heart liberal judges, only to kill again.
Had the left not supported sanctuary cities, in DIRECT violation of immigration and residency laws, Kate Steinle would still be alive. Had laws been enforced, Steinle would still be alive. Had Francisco Sanchez stopped at a pourus border and prevented from entering to violate laws, Steinle would still be alive. Had Francisco Sanchez been kept from RETURNING 5 times after deportation, Steinle would still be alive. Did Obama offer any “thoughtful words” at her funeral? No, apparently you have to be a black thug before this administration can have a shred of sympathy for your death.
Really? You don’t think THIS is sort of an indication? So, you are OK with 9 people being killed. Just a little error. No harm, no foul. Black lives DON’T matter as much as an opportunity to violate citizen’s rights even more than is currently under way.
You leftists think that if someone makes a “thoughtful statement”, supports a law, enacts restrictions or shows faux sympathy, the problem is solved. Well, no, that’s now how it works. Ongoing and permanent diligence is required. If you people are not dedicated to that, then get out of the way and let people who ARE take the reins.
You are a fool, to put it mildly.
@Pete, #7:
A lot of people on the right seem to “absolutely know” a lot of questionable things. Supporting evidence often doesn’t seem to be required for this sort of “knowing.” The fact of the matter is that neither you nor I know anything more about Roof’s background check failure than what we’ve seen in the media. Of the various reports that I’ve looked at, the NYT article provides by far the most detailed account of the circumstances that led to the fatal error. I see nothing there that should cause any fair-minded person to conclude that the error was the result of organizational or individual incompetence, or of the laziness of “paper-pushers who would rather take it easy on themselves.”
As noted, there’s a specific reason for the oversight, which resulted from a jurisdictional peculiarity having to do with a small portion of the city in question being across a county line. Not looking for such jurisdictional peculiarities was an unnoticed flaw in background check procedure. It likely would have remained unnoticed unless some incident occurred that revealed it. Now that it’s been revealed, there will likely be procedural or record-keeping changes to prevent any future recurrence. There is no good reason at all to believe that the unnamed FBI employee who stepped on this unsuspected landmine wasn’t diligently following existing background check procedures to the letter. The accusation is based on nothing more than a prejudice that exists on the right regarding federal employees.
@Greg:
What aload of malarkey, answered simply thus:
Was Roof legally able, under the law as written that required passing a background check in order to obtain a firearm, to get one?
The answer is a resounding “No”, and yet he bought one. The law was not followed. Had the law been followed, he would NOT have been able to purchase the firearm.
There is no arguing with the facts, no matter how much gray-shading obfuscation the left tries to gin up to avoid the truth.
She went through the motions, Greg.
She made A call then considered her job done.
The FBI has lists of zip codes and the proper number of the jurisdiction to go with each and every one of them.
She lazily called a city with the right name but wrong jurisdiction.
And then she put up her feet and called it a day.
LBPD has a centralized computer for all records in the city, BUT it also has sub-stations where individuals have personal knowledge of the person in question.
So, usually, the FBI calls the sub-station for the zip code concerned.
Those police can also access their centralized record as well as add information based on experience.
When your FBI lady got no joy from the wrong jurisdiction she Ass-U-Me’ed that she was done, so she stopped.
9 good people died.
There are no additional laws Obama can add to the books that can make an incompetent FBI agent become competent.
@Greg:
Do you ever actually step back and look at your positions? When Obama is invoking racism in every police shooting well before (or, sometimes, in spite of) receiving the established facts, do you think he would be better served to wait until he knows what he is talking about?
Bottom line STILL is that despite the thousands of regulations you leftists think is good for everyone, unless they are IMPLEMENTED, they don’t do much good, and more of the same will not do any more good.
Greg would rather blame a flag. Than an incompetent government employee.
@Ditto: There is obviously a culture in government that one can do as little as they want, be as incompetent as they want, be as corrupt as they want and the absolute worst that will result is that they will retire with full benefits before they have grafted away their full share. Sometimes government incompetence merely results in wasting billions of dollars, which has to be extracted from the American taxpayer. But sometimes, people die.
Remember officer Michael Slager? He made a mistake, one exacerbated by the actions of his suspect, Walter Scott, who died needlessly. Yet, Scott pays the price for his mistake (a gross error in judgement, not racism) in losing his job and being tried for a crime. As unfortunate as the consequences may be, they are required and the implementation of those consequences causes others to give more consideration to their actions (note that when the consequences are foolishly administered, as in NYC, Ferguson or Baltimore, the consideration of actions has a negative effect).
But let’s just forgive and forget, right Greg? At least, as long as it is protecting liberal interests.
@Bill, #14:
There’s obviously a political culture on the right that believes and promotes this sort of nonsense, despite the fact that it’s not backed up by evidence. The fact is that there’s evidence suggesting just the opposite. Logic also argues against the proposition that private contractors primarily concerned with profits who fill positions with that in mind are always going to be more efficient and reliable than government organizations with a defined mission that hire career employees who are periodically evaluated for their ability to contribute to the fulfillment of that mission.
You can always find striking examples of indifferent and/or incompetent government employees, just as you can find striking examples of indifferent and/or incompetent private sector employees. Generalizing to an entire class of based on specific examples is faulty logic, however. The fact that occasional dogs will bite isn’t evidence that all dogs are vicious. Want an example of what the private sector can do for the taxpayers? Private contractors providing goods and services in connection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were estimated in 2011 to have cost U.S. taxpayers over $60 billion through waste and outright fraud.
You have zero evidence that the FBI employee who conducted Roof’s background check wasn’t trying to to a thorough job. What you have is an instance of a background check failure that occurred because of an identifiable and correctable flaw in the procedure. You’ve got that and your anti-government prejudices, which you appear to be oblivious to despite the fact that you roll them out on a regular basis.
@Ditto, #13:
People are free to proudly display the flag that Dylann Roof was posing with if they wish, pretending that the negative associations widely attached to it do not exist. The problem is that they do exist. The left did not create them. People who think like Dylann Roof did.
I don’t much care about the flag one way or the other. I never saw it as a symbol adopted by those who would persecute me. A lot of people do view it that way, with reason. What are they supposed to think when they see it displayed, outside of some appropriate historical context that defines why it’s there? What is a Jewish person supposed to think if someone is carrying a Nazi flag in a parade?
@Greg:
You leave out the most vital element; probably because it breaks your case. Private businesses fire people that prove to be incompetent because it costs the company money. The government, on the other hand, feels no need because all they are squandering is taxpayer money and there is an endless supply of taxpayer money.
Reprimanding or firing someone is not fun. For a person with a conscience, it is very painful. So, for government people with no accountability and no repercussions, why would they put themselves through such personal pain when they are not required to? It is much easier to to just let incompetence ride and, if inefficiency grows to measurable amounts, just hire more people. It’s just taxpayer money you’re squandering. Don’t worry; they’ll collect more.
This is why the government is inefficient. It is why the IRS targets who the President tells them to target without fear of repercussion. NO ONE gets fired from the government. Hell, even a guy caught watching porn all day, on the clock, on a government computer, hasn’t been fired yet. He’s been on paid leave. Amtrak employees lied about overtime pay… GROSSLY lied, to the tune of some charging 40 hours… a DAY. It’s OK; no one gets fired. The government is inherently inefficient. Only by thinking you may lose your job if you don’t DO your job will efficiency be achieved.
Couple that with life or death decisions. Gun control in the government’s hands? How about health care? Oh, how about all your digital information?
Weak and silly, Greg. Weak and silly.
@Greg:
You leave out the most vital element; probably because it breaks your case. Private businesses fire people that prove to be incompetent because it costs the company money. The government, on the other hand, feels no need because all they are squandering is taxpayer money and there is an endless supply of taxpayer money.
Reprimanding or firing someone is not fun. For a person with a conscience, it is very painful. So, for government people with no accountability and no repercussions, why would they put themselves through such personal pain when they are not required to? It is much easier to to just let incompetence ride and, if inefficiency grows to measurable amounts, just hire more people. It’s just taxpayer money you’re squandering. Don’t worry; they’ll collect more.
This is why the government is inefficient. It is why the IRS targets who the President tells them to target without fear of repercussion. NO ONE gets fired from the government. Hell, even a guy caught watching pornography all day, on the clock, on a government computer, hasn’t been fired yet. He’s been on paid leave. Amtrak employees lied about overtime pay… GROSSLY lied, to the tune of some charging 40 hours… a DAY. It’s OK; no one gets fired. The government is inherently inefficient. Only by thinking you may lose your job if you don’t DO your job will efficiency be achieved.
Couple that with life or death decisions. Gun control in the government’s hands? How about health care? Oh, how about all your digital information?
Weak and silly, Greg. Weak and silly.
@Bill, #17:
They’re not “squandering the taxpayers’ money.” They’re performing essential functions and providing services that the people of the nation either want or depend upon. Fulfillment of those functions involves expenditures that generate enormous amounts of business in the private sector. Further, every dollar paid to a government employee as wages or salary is soon spent in the private sector. There’s nowhere else to spend it. The government doesn’t keep its tax revenue, removing it from circulation; it makes certain that it keeps moving, even when private sector activity is contracting. That keeps the wheels turning, rather than letting a vicious cycle set in that could result in economic depression.
Both the private and the public sector are essential components of the U.S. economy. A lot of private sector advocates don’t seem to get this, most likely because they ultimately only measure worth and efficiency in terms of dollars and profits. This gives rise to an interesting contradiction: Consider how many people become wealthy in the private sector by exploiting the complexities of the system, rather than by doing anything constructive. They may characterize their exploitation as useful, but close inspection often reveals a lot of damage in their wakes and not much useful to the economy as a whole.
The private sector is teeming with parasites to a far greater degree than the public sector, where people are actually providing public services for their paychecks. They’re just not defined as parasites because they’re so successful at it. The pile of money itself is viewed as evidence of productivity. You won’t find the equivalent of of a derivatives trader in the public sector; you won’t find CEOs cashing in on multi-million dollar golden parachute packages after leaving their shareholders with enormous losses, their companies in bankruptcy, and their pensioners reliant on the government to make up a fraction of what they were promised after 30 or 40 years of work. That sort of thing is astonishingly common in the private sector. It’s considered entirely normal.
@Greg:
They are also failing to do their jobs and, as a result, money is squandered, money is stolen and people are killed.
I work in aviation. We have to fill out lots of paperwork. We work with paperwork every day. Every mechanic has to be well-versed in what is required on the job as well as the documentation they fill out to describe the work they have done.
Guess what happens when someone falsifies a record or even makes an honest mistake? Cmon, Greg… take a wild guess.
While there are varying degrees of severity, the first thing that happens is that a person can lose their “privileges”. Unlike left wing fantasies, these are not “rights”, but privileges such as being entrusted to perform work and fill out the necessary records. They can have their certifications revoked; in many repair stations, without the proper certifications, one is not even allowed to perform work on aircraft or components. Losing privileges and/or certifications means, for all practical purposes, losing one’s job and being unable and prohibited from getting another job in aviation.
It is also possible to suffer federal prosecution. Falsifying or improperly completing paperwork on, say, a component can be punishable by prosecution AND jail time. Judgements cannot be made about the minor paperwork and important paperwork. It ALL has to be thoroughly and efficiently filled out. Or else.
However, you have a different view of responsibilities. You feel that not only is it unimportant (or at least easily excusable) for federal workers on the taxpayer’s payroll to inefficiently or incompetently perform their jobs but that there should be no responsibility demanded for such mistakes/omissions. It is, apparently, asking too much of someone to do a thorough job, even when public safety is at stake. To make matters worse, people like you think the federal government should have a bigger and bigger role in our lives, regulating our health care, our purchases, our personal safety and even our memorabilia, yet you don’t expect anyone with the responsibility of documenting all this activity to bother actually DOING it.
I laid out a pretty embarrassing list of examples of lack of care for the US tax dollar, but it is by no means comprehensive; those are just off the top of my head. As people like yourself make excuse after excuse as to why the government cannot properly and effectively do the things THE GOVERNMENT has insisted it do, usually due to not having enough money, you make no demands that the tax dollars available (often in the trillions per year) is simply not enough. Even though the IRS spends money and resources targeting conservative groups and harassing them for political reasons, they find themselves without enough money to provide customer service. Despite having to zero out their budget at the end of the fiscal year, buying furniture and artwork, so they don’t have their budget cut, the VA does not have the funds it needs to examine patients before they die waiting for help.
Waste. Fraud. Graft. Incompetence. And the left never wants to hold them accountable. Even when death results.
Really? You have some statistics to back that up? Besides, you know what happens in the private sector when someone is not performing to their pay grade?
They get fired. And silly, weak excuses, like yours, is not enough to save them.
@Bill, #20:
I have some supporting observations concerning how the world appears to work.
How many in the private sector whose greed was responsible for nearly bringing the nation’s entire financial system down were ultimately held accountable for what they did? You can’t name one, because there weren’t any. The last I heard, “being held accountable” had taken the form of $18.4 billion in cash bonuses, which were only a portion of their winnings. The only people punished were their victims—private and public employee pension plans, which means retirees; countless small investors; businesses that folded, the millions who were eventually without jobs, etc. Not to mention the taxpayers, who had to bear the costs of the government’s response to the disaster. The people who profited enormously from all of this don’t qualify as parasites?
I believe I’ve already mentioned the $60 billion taxpayer dollars lost to contractor fraud in connection with Iraq and Afghanistan. Are we to believe that was a unique situation? I suspect it was only a uniquely exploitable opportunity. DoD cost overruns are fairly routine. It isn’t public employees who are suddenly expecting to be paid a lot more than was estimated when they were initially awarded contracts.
People who take public employees for granted tend to freak out the moment even some small service they provide is suddenly missing. Witness their reaction to loss of access to national parks and monuments the last time Republicans shut down the government over spending authorization. I wonder how they would have reacted if all air traffic had been grounded for lack of air traffic controllers, or if Social Security payments had suddenly ceased because there was no one to operate the payment system? They apparently don’t believe border guards actually do much. You’d find out the truth is something very different, if they were all suddenly absent. Do you imagine Homeland Security does nothing? Or the FDA, or the CDC? Of course vital government services continued, because public employees performing them continued to work despite the prospect of an interruption in their pay. Federal employees have a history of doing that. I’m not sure you could expect the same from private sector employees.
I get so weary of the right’s public incessant employee bashing. The private sector doesn’t actually care much about public services, except for those their businesses are dependent on. Even those are generally taken for granted. The private sector cares about profit. Human needs are relevant only to the degree that they affect profits. That may not be an individual person’s attitude, but it’s the economic system’s attitude.
@Greg:
Well, Greg, whose job would it be to hold them accountable? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count. Seems far too many of them have deep connections to a certain President’s administration and not only escaped responsibility, but held positions in his cabinet. Plus, it was the liberal Community Reinvestment Act that provided the catalyst that all but destroyed the financial and housing industries. Gee, more government failure without accountability.
Zero accountability, Greg. From IRS targeting, to gun-running causing deaths, to the VA scandal, to Obamacare and the Obamacare website, to wasting taxpayer money on extravagant parties, to falsifying time accounting, to watching pornography instead of working… NO accountability and, therefore, a massive culture of incompetence.
And it resulted in the death of 9 innocent people. It is indefensible, Greg and it is weak and silly to try.
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
Thomas Paine
@Bill: Good points, Bill.
When Obama took office he announced Wed would be cocktail party night, Fri would be music party night.
Then, he blew the dog whistle that work could be shirked with no adverse effects in his Administration.
All those “gun-running causing deaths, to the VA scandal, to Obamacare and the Obamacare website….” are the direct result of gov’t employees taking their cue from Obama’s lead.
Work!?!?
This FBI worker was just doing what she’d seen all her co-workers do: slack off.
@Nanny G: Maynard would be a stand-out in this administration.