This should make you angry.
A mistake by U.S. Air Force officials in reporting Devin Patrick Kelley’s past conviction for domestic violence allowed him to buy four guns, including the semi-automatic rifle used in the Sunday shooting at a South Texas church that left 26 dead and 20 others wounded, state and federal officials confirmed Monday.
Pentagon officials that had Kelley’s 2012 conviction in a military court for assaulting his then-wife and stepson been reported correctly to a national database used in clearing people to buy guns, the 26-year-old New Braunfels man would have been denied permission to buy the weapons.
Retired Col. Don Christensen, who was the chief prosecutor for the Air Force at the time of Kelley’s general court-martial, said that while Kelley’s punitive discharge — a bad conduct discharge — would not have prohibited him from owning a gun, his sentence to a year’s confinement in a military prison would have.
Under federal law, anyone convicted of “a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” is prohibited from possessing a firearm, federal officials said.
“He fractured his baby stepson’s skull,” Christensen said of the crime of which Kelley was convicted.
Air Force officials are investigating the mistake, Pentagon officials confirmed to The Associated Press.
Texas Department of Public Safety and other state officials said earlier Monday that Kelley was denied a state handgun license, even though he would not have needed one to possess the Ruger AR-556 semi-automatic assault rifle reportedly used in the shooting.
We have a system in place that should have prevented this man from buying those guns. (The fact that anyone can buy assault rifles like the one he used is another matter, but let’s put that aside for now.) But a background check system relies on accurate data, and our system has a lot of holes in it, including this pretty glaring one. Back in the 90’s, after Georges Hennard killed 25 people at a Luby’s in Killeen, our legislature responded by passing the concealed carry law. Can we respond to the tragedy in Sutherland Springs by working to fix the problems with the national background check system? Can we at least try to do that much? I would like to think so, but we’ve seen this movie before and we know how it ends. Mother Jones and the Current have more.
We don’t have a system in place that would have prevented him from buying the same guns. If the Air Force had not made a mistake, he could have still bought the guns from a private sale or at gun show where background checks are not required.
Background checks are required at gun shows if the purchase is made from a Federal Firearms License holder. There is no provision in Texas or Federal law requiring, or even allowing, a private party to perform a background check.
Private dealers at a gun show are like Heights housewives running a Saturday garage sale, but instead of selling used, outdated clothing to anyone who walks up to the card table, they’re selling Glocks and AR-15s….no questions asked.