FBI Says Charleston Gunman Should Not Have Been Able To Buy Gun
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The FBI is revising an earlier assessment that a background check was properly done.
FBI Director James Comey told reporters Friday “this rips all of our hearts out” and “we are all sick this happened.”
Comey said the FBI made a clerical error due in part between a breakdown in paperwork between police departments and counties.
Roof, the 21-year-old accused of murdering nine African-American attendees of a bible study class at Charleston’s Emanuel AME church, used .45 caliber handgun to carry out the attack, stopping several times to reload.
Earlier stories said that the gun was a gift from Dylann Roof’s father, and that the father could be liable if he knew of his son’s earlier felony charge of possession of a narcotic.
South Carolina is one of 40 states that do not require background checks for private gun transactions, like the one that allegedly took place between Roof and his father. Gun control activists call this the “private sale” loophole.
It’s illegal to give guns to felons or people with felony indictments — but that’s only if you know about their criminal records. In South Carolina, you don’t have to ask, so private citizens can more or less freely exchange guns.
If prosecutors can show that the father knew about Roof’s indictment but gave him the gun anyway, Roof’s father could face up to 10 years in prison.
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