FBI Being Sued by Charleston Church Shooting Victims

Insisting that Dylan Roof, the gunman who attacked a church in Charleston, South Carolina, should not have had the ability to purchase a handgun that was used during the attack, the victims of the church shooting are now attempting to sue the FBI for their supposed ‘negligence.’

The shooting victims are enraged at the fact that Dylan Roof was allowed to purchase a gun with the apparent knowledge of the FBI despite ‘red flags’ appearing everywhere. The lawyers for several individuals who had survived the attack state that the FBI did not issue a thorough background check when Roof bought the gun, thus enabling this shooting to occur.

These lawyers mention that had the FBI managed to identify a preexisting drug arrest on Roof’s record, this shooting may not have occurred. Instead, they claim that the entire background check process was flawed and not as comprehensive as it should have been.

One of the attorneys, Andy Savage, was quoted as saying “In this case, you had an unqualified purchaser that slipped through the cracks and the result is what happened on June 17.”

The Charleston shooting had reignited and brought forth talk about the issue of interracial conflict and race relations in the United States. Roof, who is a young Caucasian man, presumably targeted this church, which was predominantly black, strictly out of hate for African Americans. This shooting even led many to question the notion that America is in a post-racial period.

In regards to the role of the FBI in the shooting, federal authorities have admitted that they were to blame, at least partially, for allowing Dylan Roof to purchase a handgun that was used in the shooting last year. The FBI Director James Comey has said that he plans to rework the background check process in order to prevent such tragedies from occurring again.

The apparent mistake, however, which led to this debacle originated down to a jail clerk that inputted the wrong information in reference to Roof’s record. While it had been identified later on, it was not updated into a state database so for the FBI accessing this crucial piece of information was impossible.

In regards to background checks, the FBI makes over 58,000 checks per day and these checks are handled by about 500 people who work in a call center. Having said that, roughly 2 percent of these checks end up inconclusive just like the background check that was conducted on Dylan Roof.

At the current moment, Roof is in jail and has a pending death sentence penalty due to the nature of the hate crime. He has both a state and federal trial, with his federal trial set to begin during the month of November.

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