Democrats Launch Renewed Assault on the US Constitution

Can't you see you are being goaded? He doesn't believe half the crap he's saying, he's only saying it to get a rise out of you. I wasn't going to say anything but I could see the smirking by Max from here.

Was there information in a database somewhere that would have been found to prevent him from getting a gun?

Under the law, the FBI has three business days to deny or approve a purchase. If a decision is not made in that time frame, the law permits the dealer to complete the sale.

On April 13, a veteran FBI examiner who routinely handled 15 or more cases a day pulled up Roof’s request. Checking his criminal record, she saw a record of the narcotics arrest, which erroneously listed the arresting agency as the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department. She faxed a request for information to the sheriff’s office and to the county prosecutor. But officials at the sheriff’s office told her they were not handling the case and referred her to the Columbia Police Department.

The fact that the Columbia police handled the arrest — not the sheriff’s department — was not reported in the NCIC, which relies on the agency in question to submit information.

“It’s not clear why that happened,” Comey said of the error, “but it made a big difference.”

The sheriff’s department, which unlike the Columbia Police Department has a jail, booked Roof, and that might have led to the confusion.

Had the examiner been able to see the Columbia police report that Roof admitted to possession of a drug, or had the county prosecutor gotten back to her and told her of the report’s existence, “that transaction would have been denied,” Comey said. The prosecutor’s office never replied to her query.

The examiner’s effort was further tripped up by a geographic irregularity that the FBI did not reflect in its system.

Only a small part of the city of Columbia is located in Lexington County, with most in neighboring Richland County. The FBI’s system did not account for that jurisdictional split, and the examiner contacted only the West Columbia Police Department, which reported no record of Roof’s arrest.

On April 16, after the mandatory three-day waiting period lapsed with no adverse ruling from the FBI, Roof got his gun — a .45-caliber Glock pistol. There is no requirement for a dealer to notify the bureau when it has sold a gun, bureau officials said.

“There were a combination of things; one could say highly improbable events came together in this circumstance,” Comey said. “But the one we are definitely accountable for is not having reflected the geography of South Carolina on our contact sheet.”

Comey said he had spoken to the examiner and described her as “heartbroken,” but he said she had followed proper procedures.

FBI agents in South Carolina met Friday with the families of the victims to explain what happened, he said.