Why Background Checks Couldn’t Stop Dylan Roof
By John Lott, July 10, 2015 NewsBusters
The FBI says that the federal background check system for guns should have stopped Dylann Roof, the racist who killed nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston.
“This rips all of our hearts out,” says FBI Director James Comey, who blamed the mistake at least partially on improperly labeled paperwork.
But the truth is more complicated. First, even a perfectly functioning background check system very likely wouldn’t have stopped Roof from getting a gun. Second, the current background check system is a much worse mess than Comey recognizes.
With Roof planning his attack for at least six months, it seems hard to believe that he couldn’t have figured out some way of obtaining a gun. Indeed, he stole the gun that he used in this attack.
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