Trump administration officials say the Air Force didn't submit the accused Texas church shooter's criminal history to the FBI, as required by Pentagon rules.
The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Devin Patrick Kelley was convicted of assault in an Air Force court martial in 2012 and given a bad conduct discharge in 2014.
He is the suspected gunman in the attack Sunday in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in which 26 people were killed.
Under Pentagon rules, information about convictions of military personnel in crimes like assault should be submitted to the FBI's Criminal Justice Investigation Services Division.
Earlier in the day, authorities said they were trying to determine why a court-martial for assaulting his first wife and her child did not prevent Kelley from buying a Ruger AR-556 rifle used in the attack.
Federal gun regulations prohibit anyone with a domestic violence conviction, even at a misdemeanor level, from purchasing a gun, and Kelley was found guilty in 2012 of two charges of assault after an Air Force court-martial, according to officials. He was confined in a military prison for a year, given a bad conduct discharge and reduced in rank.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told "CBS This Morning" on Monday that the law should have blocked Kelley from obtaining the rifle. He tried to get a permit from the state of Texas to carry a concealed gun but was denied, Abbott said.
“And so under the current system of federal law he should have (been) prevented from being able to make this purchase,” Abbott said. ”How that got through the cracks, I don’t have that information.”
Authorities say Kelley bought four guns, two in Texas and two in Colorado, beginning in 2014. He purchased the Ruger AR-556, a variant of the popular AR-15 that was later found at the church, from an Academy Sports and Outdoors store in San Antonio. CNN reported that when he filled out the paperwork for a background check, he checked the box indicating that he did not have a disqualifying criminal history.
Academy Sports and Outdoors said in a statement that “based on information we received from law enforcement, we confirmed that the suspect purchased a firearm from one of our San Antonio locations in 2016.”
The company did not specify what kind of gun and said it was cooperating with the investigation.
In addition, two handguns, a Glock 9-mm handgun, and a Ruger .22 caliber handgun, were found in his car, according to Fred Milanowski the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in Houston.
Kelley sprayed the church in Sutherland Springs with gunfire around 11:20 a.m. on Sunday, then walked inside while he continued to shoot until a man grabbed the rifle. About half of his victims were children.
Kelley fled and was later found dead; investigators found evidence that seems to indicate he shot himself. Investigators say he might have been targeting his mother-in-law, who attended the church and who had received threatening texts from him. She was not in the church Sunday morning.
“Typically a domestic violence conviction does make somebody ineligible to buy a gun and we don’t know enough about why that didn’t stop this man from buying his gun from a licensed dealer,” said Avery Gardiner, the co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Kelley was convicted under Article 128 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, which refers only to assault, not domestic assault. He was not dishonorably discharged from the military, which also would have prevented him from buying a gun, but instead received a bad conduct discharge, Gardiner said.
In Texas, a convicted felon who is ineligible to buy a gun can still go to a gun show or online and buy a gun from a private seller without being subject to a background check, Gardiner said. Some states have tightened state requirements for background checks but Texas is not one of them, she said.
One in five guns is sold in the United States without a background check, she said.
“It’s still illegal for somebody to purchase if they’re a prohibited purchaser but since there is no background check that is done between a private seller and somebody it’s very hard for anybody to detect that,” she said.
Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization to prevent gun violence, said that the Department of Defense had sent many records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System of people who had received dishonorable discharges. The group does not know if the Texas shooter had a record showing he was disqualified from possessing a firearm, said spokeswoman Phoebe Kilgour.
After the shooting, President Donald Trump said from Tokyo that the mass shooting was not “a guns situation” but “a mental health problem at the highest level.”
Asked about gun control measures, he said "mental health is your problem here" and he called Kelley a “very deranged individual” with “a lot of problems over a long period of time.”
Gardiner responded that the shooting of 26 people was indeed a gun problem. Americans do not have higher rates of mental illness that other countries, she said.
"The difference between America and other countries is easy access to guns for people we all agree shouldn’t have them," she said.
In February, Trump rolled back an Obama administration regulation that made it harder for some people with mental illnesses to buy a gun. Disability groups and the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the rule.
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