CHL Stops Church Shooting

Psychedelic Bang said:
I think its important to point out that he, "dishonestly," manipulated the NICS check. Yes, the NICS system passed him, but he failed to fill out the paperwork honestly

https://www.atf.gov/file/61446/download

It doesn't really mean the military had to report the convictions. He lied filling out the paperwork. He didn't, "pass the background check," he beat the background check.
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I've said that he lied, but the more I think about it ... did he? What question on the 4473 should he have answered "Yes" to?

To answer this, we have to look beyond the questions themselves, and go to the instructions. Under the instructions for question 11.b we find the following:

Question 11.b - 12. Generally, 18 U.S.C. 922(g) prohibits the shipment, transportation, receipt, or possession in or affecting interstate commerce of a firearm by one who: has been convicted of a felony in any Federal, State or local court, or any other crime, punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year (this does not include State misdemeanors punishable my imprisonment of two years or less); is a fugitive from justice; is an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, or narcotic drug, or any other controlled sustance; has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to a mental institution; has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; is subject to certain restraining orders; convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domenstic violence under Federal, State or Tribal law; has renounced his or her U.S. citizenship; is an alien illegally in the United States or an alien admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa. Furthermore, section 922(n) prohibits the shipment, transportation, or receipt in or affecting interstate commerce of a firearm by one who is under indictment or information for a felony in any Federal, State or local court or any other crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year. An information is a formal accusation of a crime verified by a prosecutor.

A member of the Armed Forces must answer "yes" to 11.b or 11.c if charged with an offense that was either referred to a General Court Martial, or at which the member was convicted. Discharged "under dishonorable conditions" means separation from the Armed Forces resulting from a dishonorable discharge or dismissal adjudged by a General Court-Martial. That term does not include any other discharge or separation from the Armed Forces.
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So ... first, we know that the shooter was court-martialed. But do we know what type of court-martial he received? There are three types of court-martial: Summary, Special, and General. The instructions for the 4473 require a serviceperson to answer "yes" only if referred to or convicted by a General Court-Martial. we need to determine what type of court-martial he was tired under before we can determine whether or not this part required him to answer "yes."

Next, was his discharge "under dishonorable conditions"? The original court-martial sentenced him to a dishonorable discharge. On appeal, that was reduced to a bad conduct discharge. So we need to find out whether or not a bad conduct discharge is a discharge under dishonorable conditions. The United States has a metric boatload of types of discharge:

  • Entry level separation
  • Honorable
  • General
  • Other than Honorable (OTH)
  • Clemency
  • Bad Conduct
  • Dishonorable

According to Wikipedia, only a dishonorable discharge is a bar to firearms possession.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_discharge

According to the Social Security Administration ( https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/handbook/handbook.09/handbook-0956.html ), a bad conduct discharge is under dishonorable conditions if imposed by a general court martial.

Consequently, as much as I want to continue saying that he lied, that he was (or should have been) a prohibited person, and that he "beat" the system ... without more definitive information I'm just not certain. It appears that he bought four firearms over a period of four years, two in Colorado and two in Texas. If I had any faith in the system, I would think that at least one of the four background checks would have turned up a hit if he was supposed to be prohibited.

I need more information on the nature of his court martial.
 
Expect to hear he 'passed the ineffective NICS check'.
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Well, it IS ineffective. It is extremely rare we even investigate or prosecute anything when someone fails it, so they are free to continue attempting to obtain a weapon. Going from memory, based on ATF’s own figure, around 10% of the time, it wrongly denies people (not counting delays).

Even in the limited realm of mass shootings, most spree shooters have passed NICS, even though at least three of them I can think of were prohibited people (VA Tech, Dylan Roof, Trainwreck). The Sutherland Springs shooter was a prohibited person in 3 or 4 different categories and still purchased multiple weapons despite NICS.
 
Awesome....but you won't hear on CNN or MSNBC that he used an AR15.
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You’ll be lucky if you even hear an armed citizen was involved. Not less than two hours ago I listened to three news broadcasts and the only one that even mentioned a citizen was armed completely omitted the fact that the good guy shot the criminal. To hear that news report, you’d think the shooter spontaneously disarmed on his own accord, ran away, called his father to say he didn’t think he would make it and then shot himself.
 
I wonder how many of you noticed that this thread was not started in response to what happened yesterday. It was started in September.

At any rate--I heard a report on NPR that pointed to differences in legal terminology from armed services convictions and civilian convictions contributing to issues like what happened in this situation. The shooter did, in fact, pass the NICS background check, which, technically he shouldn't have because of his conviction under the military justice system. So, the current system failed and contributed to this tragedy. He was convicted for domestic violence against his wife and a months old baby. He hurt the baby bad enough that he cracked his/her skull. He never should have been allowed to buy guns in the first place.

Also, based on the same report I heard on the radio, his current wife and mother in law go to the church where this happened. They were not, however, present while he went about murdering innocent church goers. This is just speculation on my part, but my guess is he had a beef with the church because he blamed the church for whatever problems he and his wife were having. I've seen that sort of thing happen before. The church teaches certain things one spouse embraces and the other spouse doesn't. Problems crop up in the marriage, and the church gets blamed by the spouse who doesn't agree with whatever it is the church teaches. Again, just speculation on my part.

It was also reported that he apparently texted some threats to his mother in law, but details on what those threats were have not been made available.
 
New York Times article on the Air Force's failure to report the shooter's conviction to NICS:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/...version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

There's more and more evidence that he was targeting his wife's family (and, perhaps, the entire church congregation if he felt they were turning his wife against hime). With that mindset, if he hadn't been able to buy guns I have no doubt that he would have used something else -- like a bomb, or arson. The President said it straight: This is not a gun problem, tis is a mental health problem. The fact that the NICS system failed because the process wasn't followed is a diversion.
 
Well, the Air Force failed to follow both federal law and Pentagon directives in not reporting. Someone(s) just had a career-ending event, if not a criminal one.
 
Aguila Blanca said:
I've said that he lied, but the more I think about it ... did he? What question on the 4473 should he have answered "Yes" to?

To answer this, we have to look beyond the questions themselves, and go to the instructions. Under the instructions for question 11.b we find the following:
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He lied. Look at question 11 c - "Have you ever been convicted in any court of a felony, or any other crime for which the judge could have imprisoned you for more than one year, even if you received a shorter sentence including probation."

Military court may not classify crimes as felonies or misdemeanors, but for this question, that is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is, "could the judge have imprisoned him for more than one year."

Furthermore, the instructions from 11.b and 11.c --

"A member of the Armed Forces must answer "yes" to 11.b. or 11.c. if charged with an offense that was either referred to a General Court Martial, or at which the member was convicted."

We know he was convicted of a crime for which he could have served far more than a year.

The Government Agencies are admitting there was, "no way he should have, "passed," the NICS." Logic dictates there was no way for him to truthfully fill out the paperwork and pass the NICS.

And I understand what you are saying about, "all kinds of court martials," but again I am just looking at comma - convicted - sentence could have been more than a year
 
This is one time that I don’t care what the law is, wording or whatever says; a serial domestic abuser that has caused significant injuries should not have been able to buy a gun, own a gun or even touch a gun.
I know the government, this isn’t the only guy that has slipped through the cracks. If there’s one we know about, there’s probably thousands more.
 
Psychedelic Bang said:
Military court may not classify crimes as felonies or misdemeanors, but for this question, that is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is, "could the judge have imprisoned him for more than one year."

Furthermore, the instructions from 11.b and 11.c --

"A member of the Armed Forces must answer "yes" to 11.b. or 11.c. if charged with an offense that was either referred to a General Court Martial, or at which the member was convicted."

We know he was convicted of a crime for which he could have served far more than a year.

The Government Agencies are admitting there was, "no way he should have, "passed," the NICS." Logic dictates there was no way for him to truthfully fill out the paperwork and pass the NICS.

And I understand what you are saying about, "all kinds of court martials," but again I am just looking at comma - convicted - sentence could have been more than a year
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No, whether or not he could have been sentenced to more than one year is NOT the only relevant question. The instruction clearly states that it applies if the service member was referred to or convicted by a GENERAL court martial. At the time I wrote my post, I didn't know if his court martial was a general, or one of the other types.

In fact, a subsequent article clarified that it was, in fact, a general court martial. Whether the shooter fully understood the law and lied, or whether he read the part about "dishonorable" and thought that because his discharge was upgraded from dishonorable to bad conduct the prohibition didn't apply, we'll never know. If that's what he thought, then he didn't lie -- he made a mistake.

In the end it doesn't really matter if he lied or if he made a mistake. What matters to me is that the usual suspects are again clamoring for more gun control laws, when the laws we already have would have prevented him from buying guns IF THE AIR FORCE HAD FOLLOWED THE RULES. No matter how many laws the politicians put in place, they're of absolutely no use if the people who are supposed to follow them don't do the paperwork.

Bottom line: the system that should have prevented him from possessing a gun ... failed. That's not a reason or an excuse to pass new laws. That's a reason to start asking why the system didn't work, and what needs to be fixed to ensure that it does work in the future.
 
Does anyone know if the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, TX, had declared itself as a gun-free church?
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Under the law, they would have to post a 30.06 and/or a 30.07 sign to make such a declaration. I have not seen any such signs in the photos of the front of the church and since they are quite large (per the mandated letter sizing in the law) it seems unlikely that it was off-limits for carry.

Not that it was very likely to begin with in a small town in TX.
I wonder if this will prompt them to start posting?
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I think that even the most diehard anti-gunners have to realize that a no guns sign on the front door wouldn't have stopped this guy--or any other person bent on mayhem.
 
Are you saying a domestic violence conviction under military justice does not make one a prohibited person under 18 USC 922(g)? Because I do not think that is correct.
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It depends on what news source you hear. The latest I've heard is that the necessary paper work was not filled out to get the shooter's name in the instant check data base.

An earlier source indicated that military sentences are treated differently than civilian and that's were the problem happened.

Whatever the screw up was, it can probably be fixed with some simple legislation...so that ain't happening.
 
I don't think it needs legislation to fix. It needs training.

What appears to be the problem is that on appeal his discharge was changed from dishonorable to bad conduct. From what I've gathered, the Air Force protocol is to automatically report dishonorable discharges to NICS. His came through as a bad conduct, and my guess is that whatever clerk was handling it didn't read far enough (or flat out didn't know) to see that it was for a domestic violence conviction and therefore should have been reported even though it wasn't a dishonorable.
 
Well, he was a prohibited person at least three or four different ways if reporting is to be believed:

1. He was confined for twelve months by the general courts martial (922(g)(1))
2. He was dishonorably discharged (922(g)(6)) later changed to bad conduct on appeal.
3. There was a protective order against him (922(g)(8)). So, the USAF is not the only one to drop the ball.
4. He was convicted in a court of a crime of domestic violence (922(g)(9)).

He is also not the first nor last spree shooter to pass the NICS check. As mentioned earlier the Trainwreck and Charleston church shooters both passed NICS checks despite being prohibited persons. The VA Tech shooter was prohibited under federal law but not state law and therefore was not reported to NICS by VA. Not that ATF would have done anything if he had failed the NICS check multiple times anyway - he’d be free to just go buy on the black market.
 
From what I understand the Academy Sport purchases were at least a year older or more. One gun may have been purchased through the FFL two years ago.

People recently close to him must have known his violent past, also that he was in possession of guns, also there was plenty of time to contact the police.

The USAF isn't the only negligence here.

--> This from the LA Times of all media https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/brea...l-debate/ar-AAuwxVy?li=AA4ZnC&ocid=spartanntp


Ok - its all coming out now. He was living with his family. The family must of known of his violent past. The family knew he had guns. There is just no way to deny it - -- https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/brea...indicate/ar-AAuwD6C?li=AA4ZnC&ocid=spartanntp

There is no plausible deniability for the members of his family.
 
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In the end it doesn't really matter if he lied or if he made a mistake. What matters to me is that the usual suspects are again clamoring for more gun control laws, when the laws we already have would have prevented him from buying guns IF THE AIR FORCE HAD FOLLOWED THE RULES. No matter how many laws the politicians put in place, they're of absolutely no use if the people who are supposed to follow them don't do the paperwork.
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Well I'm as upset as anyone of the clamouring, I have to point this out - no they wouldn't. The existing laws would have prevented him from buying that gun from an FFL. But he could just buy one privately without any difficulty.
 
divil said:
Well I'm as upset as anyone of the clamouring, I have to point this out - no they wouldn't. The existing laws would have prevented him from buying that gun from an FFL. But he could just buy one privately without any difficulty.
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True.

I fell into my own trap -- I extrapolated. I live in a state where all (legal) firearms purchases must go through a background check, even private party sales. I forgot that it's not that way in the free USA.

That does not, however, negate my point, which was that if he had been prevented from buying guns he very likely would have simply used some other weapon, such as a bomb, a match, or a truck.
 
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