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FBI: Background-check system FAILED and Dylann Roof should NOT have been allowed to purchase a gun

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This is going to turn into "We need better background check system, more information to be fed into,  and more money". Watch it.

 

That's my concern as well... The anti's can turn this into a "We need stronger background checks and.... (dare I say it...)... registration!!!"  :facepalm:

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This is going to turn into "We need better background check system, more information to be fed into,  and more money". Watch it.

 

BINGO !

 

The solution will be more bureaucracy, more intrusion of privacy and more cost, all because government workers can't do their GD job with an already intrusive system.

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And now you'll see calls for some sort of automated registry of gun owners with periodic updates required to insure accuracy. They'll want access to more info about you so they can cross reference data for accuracy. Or something like that.

 

And they'll bring up national registry....universal background checks... And other "sensible" laws.

You can bet they see the flag BS and say... We can score just like they did.

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It's fairly obvious that the Obama administration is not going to "let this crisis go to waste" . soon that parking ticket you got for a parking meter violation will be entered into a data base and cross referenced to any gun registration / purchase data base, gun club affiliation and so on.      I think they should spend  more time investigating parents who name their kids Dylan, It seems to be a popular name among these mass shooters.

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Was it a conviction after a trial or just an arrest,   article says arrest was weeks before attack.  hardly enough time to go to court and be convicted.    something else went wrong with this and the FBI is covering their tracks or the local PD who handled it.       one thing for certain is that WE will never know unless there is a Edward Snowden in the FBI.

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Was it a conviction after a trial or just an arrest, article says arrest was weeks before attack. hardly enough time to go to court and be convicted. something else went wrong with this and the FBI is covering their tracks or the local PD who handled it. one thing for certain is that WE will never know unless there is a Edward Snowden in the FBI.

Why is the FBI apologizing?

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All the hyperbole about where this is going to lead aside, I seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of disqualifying factors under the  NICS system. I thought you had to have a conviction on your record to be disqualified - not just an arrest.

 

To be disqualified for an arrest not only ignores the presumption of innocence but circumvents due process.

 

Listening to the brouhaha this has created in the MSM, they haven't really said that he would have been disqualified, just that for reasons unknown, he was kicked into "research" and the manual check was not completed in the mandated time allotted and thus he was "approved" by default.

 

Which returns us to my original question - under NICS, can you be disqualified for an arrest that has not yet been adjudicated?

 

Adios,

 

Pizza Bob

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Found the answer to my own question...

 

Identify Prohibited Persons  

The Gun Control Act (GCA) makes it unlawful for certain categories of persons to ship, transport, receive, or possess firearms. 18 USC 922(g). Transfers of firearms to any such prohibited persons are also unlawful. 18 USC 922(d).

These categories include any person:

  • Under indictment or information in any court for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;

  • convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;

  • who is a fugitive from justice;

  • who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance;

  • who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution;

  • who is an illegal alien;

  • who has been discharged from the military under dishonorable conditions;

  • who has renounced his or her United States citizenship;

  • who is subject to a court order restraining the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of the intimate partner; or

  • who has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence (enacted by the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act of 1997, Pub. L. No. 104-208, effective September 30, 1996). 18 USC 922(g) and (n).

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All the hyperbole about where this is going to lead aside, I seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of disqualifying factors under the  NICS system. I thought you had to have a conviction on your record to be disqualified - not just an arrest.

 

To be disqualified for an arrest not only ignores the presumption of innocence but circumvents due process.

 

Listening to the brouhaha this has created in the MSM, they haven't really said that he would have been disqualified, just that for reasons unknown, he was kicked into "research" and the manual check was not completed in the mandated time allotted and thus he was "approved" by default.

 

Which returns us to my original question - under NICS, can you be disqualified for an arrest that has not yet been adjudicated?

 

Adios,

 

Pizza Bob

i thought it was at the dealers discretion?

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The WSJ had a pretty good explanation.  "The Columbia police department’s report of the arrest stated that Mr. Roof admitted he was in possession of drugs. Under federal law, a drug arrest doesn’t bar a gun purchase, but Mr. Comey said that admitting to having drugs—even without a conviction—would have been grounds for denying the sale."

 

So the arrest without conviction would not have barred him, but the admission (without a conviction) does.

It is not clear if the FBI actually issued an approval after investigating and not finding the arrest and admission, or if the delay-pending period expired and the dealer sold it to him.  The FBI had contacted the wrong PD--West Columbia instead of Columbia--and they had no arrest record.

 

If you want to look at how often these kind of fails occur, I would make a distinction between an instant approval (which they say is about 99% of the time) and "delayed-pending."  I would bet most of the failures occur with the delayed-pending cases.  So 99.999% of the time the system works, and the FBI needs to figure out the issue with the 0.001%.  Of course the opposition will use this to say that anyone can pass a background check and the whole system needs to be "fixed" starting with registration and confiscation.

 

From the WSJ:

 

FBI Erred in Gun Sale to Charleston Suspect
Director says Dylann Roof should have been stopped from buying handgun in April

 

By DAMIAN PALETTA and  VALERIE BAUERLEIN
Updated July 10, 2015 7:01 p.m. ET
552 COMMENTS
WASHINGTON—Federal investigators should have prevented the accused South Carolina mass shooter from purchasing a handgun in April, FBI director James Comey said Friday.

 

An error made during a background check failed to disclose all details of the alleged assailant’s criminal background, which would have disqualified him.

 

The agency’s admission that an error in the gun-background check program played a role in the deaths of nine people at a Charleston church last month came on the day that South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from its Statehouse grounds, a move made in response to furor stemming from the alleged shooter’s affinity with the symbolic banner.

 

Mr. Comey in a meeting with reporters acknowledged the seriousness of the oversight, which occurred under the nation’s Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. He said he has launched an internal review to determine whether FBI officials should overhaul their firearm-review process to prevent such lapses in the future.

 

“It rips all of our hearts out,” Mr. Comey said. “The thought that an error on our part is connected to this guy’s purchase of a gun that he used to slaughter these people is very painful for us.”

 

Dylann Roof, accused in the June 17 rampage at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, has been charged with nine counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder and also faces a weapons charge. He hasn’t yet entered a plea or made any statements. His next scheduled court appearance is in October.

 

Mr. Comey laid out the details of how Mr. Roof came to procure the handgun used in the killings. Mr. Comey didn’t specify what kind of gun it was or where it was purchased. A law-enforcement official said Mr. Roof purchased a .45-caliber Glock pistol at Shooter’s Choice, a store in West Columbia.

 

A man at the gun counter at Shooter’s Choice declined to comment Friday about the background check or whether the store sold Mr. Roof the firearm. “We’re familiar with it, but we don’t have any comment about it,” he said. He declined to give his name.

 

Mr. Roof attempted to purchase the handgun on April 11, a Saturday, the FBI director said. The Brady act requires sellers and law-enforcement agencies—either the FBI or state agencies—to check potential buyers’ backgrounds through a system called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. That also gave the FBI three business days to determine whether he should be denied permission to buy the gun.

 

On Monday, April 13, his background screening was assigned to an FBI official in West Virginia. The official attempted to scrutinize Mr. Roof’s record, and contacted the Lexington County sheriff’s office and then the West Columbia, S.C., police to obtain details about a recent drug arrest. West Columbia is located in Lexington County, as is a small sliver of the city of Columbia—though records referenced by the examiner didn’t list Columbia as being part of Lexington County.

 

The county sheriff’s office referred the FBI official to contact the Columbia police, which had arrested Mr. Roof six weeks earlier for suspected drug possession. But because the FBI official didn’t understand that a small part of Columbia was located in Lexington County, she instead contacted the police in West Columbia, who had no record of Mr. Roof’s arrest.

 

The Columbia police department’s report of the arrest stated that Mr. Roof admitted he was in possession of drugs. Under federal law, a drug arrest doesn’t bar a gun purchase, but Mr. Comey said that admitting to having drugs—even without a conviction—would have been grounds for denying the sale.

 

Mr. Roof’s admission, Mr. Comey said, should have stopped him from purchasing the weapon. However, because the examiner had made no contact with the Columbia department—before the three-day review period ended—the sale to Mr. Roof was completed, on April 16.

 

Mr. Roof’s case was in a “delayed-pending” status while the background check was under way. Under federal law, customers are allowed to purchase the weapons if their cases are in the delayed-pending status, although some retailers still won’t make the sale.

 

The gun he purchased that day was the same gun used in the church shootings, Mr. Comey said. “We are all sick that this happened,” Mr. Comey continued. “We wish we could turn back time.”

 

Mr. Comey said FBI officials were briefing the shooting victims’ families on what he described as a “mistake.”

 

South Carolina State Rep. James Smith said it was poignant that the FBI made its announcement the day the Confederate flag was lowered from a pole on the Statehouse grounds.

 

“The fact that there was a serious mistake that may have made the difference is something we’ll never know,” said Mr. Smith, a Democrat who served in the South Carolina legislature with one of the victims of the shooting, Sen. Clementa Pinckney, for more than 15 years. “It’s tragedy on top of tragedy. It helps us remember why we’re here,” removing the flag.

 

In 2014, the FBI conducted background checks for 8.2 million firearm transactions. Of those, 228,000 went into the “delayed pending” status because examiners couldn’t determine whether or not the person should be cleared.

 

Tommy Tipton, a firearms trainer and gun-seller in Lexington, S.C., where Mr. Roof once lived, said with federal background checks to purchase a gun, “it’s relatively easy to fall through the cracks.”

 

Mr. Tipton, a 63-year-old former law-enforcement officer, described the background-check process as practiced at his shop, Defender Firearms.

 

He said he has people fill out a form declaring that they are not suffering from mental illness and answering several other questions. Then the prospective buyer, who must be from

South Carolina, must provide identifying information, which is fed into the FBI-maintained NICS database. That database quickly gives one of three responses to the gun dealer: proceed, delay or deny, Mr. Tipton said.

 

He said 99% of customers receive a “proceed,” and buy their guns immediately. Under the federal law, a “delay” requires gun sellers to wait up to three days for a response to proceed or deny from the system. If they don’t receive any message, they can legally sell the weapon at that time, and many stores do, Mr. Tipton said. Rarely, the system issues a denial, he said.

 

“The onus is not on us, it’s on the FBI with NICS,” he said. “How much of a background check can you really do in 10 seconds?”

He said the system has several flaws, including no robust check on a person’s mental illness.

 

“If you walked in and robbed a bank yesterday, I’ve got no way of knowing that,” he said. “The whole system needs to be taken a long look at.”

 

Mr. Roof’s attorney didn’t respond to email inquiries Friday and couldn't be reached by telephone. The police departments of Columbia, S.C., and West Columbia, S.C., didn’t return calls for comment. A spokesman for the Lexington County Sheriff’s Office in South Carolina didn’t return a call for comment.

—Cameron McWhirter and Gary Fields contributed to this article.

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