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ifmaz -> Families of Charleston shooting victims sue FBI (7/2/2016 10:48:51 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/families-of-charleston-shooting-victims-sue-the-fbi-over-background-check-error/2016/07/01/8e8968f4-3fbd-11e6-80bc-d06711fd2125_story.html
Families of Charleston shooting victims sue FBI over background-check error
The families of victims killed in last year’s shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., are suing the FBI over an error during a background check that allowed the alleged shooter to buy his gun.
The lawsuit comes a year after the mass shooting that sent shock waves through the country. Dylann Roof, then 21, a white high school dropout, is charged with opening fire and killing nine black parishioners during a prayer meeting at the historic African American church.
In the days after the shooting, FBI Director James B. Comey said in a remarkable disclosure that Roof shouldn’t have been able to buy the gun he allegedly used.
Roof had been arrested for possession of narcotics in February 2015, a charge that alone did not disqualify him from buying a gun. But Comey said Roof’s subsequent admission of the drug crime would have triggered an automatic rejection of his gun purchase if the information had been properly recorded in criminal-record and background-check databases.
Authorities have said that a clerk’s mistake in how Roof’s arrest was listed prevented the FBI examiner for his background check from seeing it. And once the three-day mandatory waiting period for gun purchases expired, Roof was able to buy the .45-caliber Glock handgun.
“We are all sick this happened,” Comey said at the time. “We wish we could turn back time.”
In one of the multiple lawsuits filed Thursday, the victims’ families said, “If the gun sale was denied as required, it would have prevented the foreseeable harm to those people.”
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If we have background checks that aren't properly supported with data, of what use is an "expanded background check"?
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