The national background check system should have prevented the Charleston, S.C., church shooter from buying a gun, according to FBI Director James Comey.
Dylann Roof, the accused shooter in the Charleston church massacre that took the lives of nine worshippers on June 17, should not have been able to purchase the gun he used in the attack.
Roof had been arrested in February on a felony narcotics charge that would have caused him to fail a background check to buy a gun. But Comey said the arrest was not in the federal computer system, and was not properly reviewed by someone at the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
“This case rips all of our hearts out, but the thought that an error on our part is connected to a gun this person used to slaughter these people is very painful to us,” Comey told reporters at the FBI headquarters, according to the Washington Post.
Photos have surfaced from prior to the shooting of Roof posing with a handgun. The 21-year-old has bene charged on nine murder counts as well as three counts of attempted murder. Federal prosecutors are also expected to charge him with a hate crime.
