Because he had previously admitted to drug possession, 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof should not have been able to pass an FBI background check purchase and legally purchase a firearm. But he did, and then proceeded to shoot and kill nine people at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina last month.
Now, according to a report in The New York Times, the FBI has acknowledged that a flaw in its background check system allowed Roof to buy the .45-caliber handgun he used to commit the murders. “We are all sick this happened,” FBI director James Comey said. “We wish we could turn back time.”
ABC News reported that Roof first tried to buy the weapon on April 11 and after an FBI examination that failed to uncover his drug admission during a prior arrest the sale went through five days later on April 15.
Director Comey has ordered a 30-day review of the system that aims at eliminating this flaw and ones like it.
