Error allowed man to buy guns Air Force failed to enter ex-airman’s domestic violence court-martial into federal database
ASUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas day after a gunman massacred parishioners in a small Texas church, the Air Force admitted Monday that it had failed to enter the man’s domestic violence courtmartial into a federal database that could have blocked him from buying the rifle he used to kill 26 people.
Under federal law, the conviction of the gunman, Devin P. Kelley, for domestic assault on his wife and toddler stepson — he had cracked the child’s skull — should have stopped Kelley from legally purchasing the military-style rifle and three other guns he acquired in the past four years.
“The Air Force has launched a review of how the service handled the criminal records of former Airman Devin P. Kelley following his 2012 domestic violence conviction,” the Air Force said in a statement.
The statement said Heather Wilson, Air Force secretary, and Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, had ordered the Air
Force inspector general to “conduct a complete review of the Kelley case.”
The Air Force also said it was looking into whether other convictions had been improperly left unreported to the federal database for firearms background checks.
New details of the killings also emerged Monday, including a possible motive. Law enforcement officials said Kelley may have been driven by anger toward his estranged wife’s family, the final chapter in a life full of domestic rage. In addition to his court-martial, in which his previous wife was the victim, he had been investigated on a rape complaint, though he was not charged and his relationship to the woman in the complaint was unclear.
The mother of Kelley’s most recent wife, Danielle, was a member of the First Baptist Church here, the target of Kelley’s rage Sunday.
“The suspect’s mother-in-law attended this church,” Freeman Martin, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said at a news conference Monday. “We know that he had made threatening texts,” he added, declining to elaborate.
“This was not racially motivated. It wasn’t over religious beliefs. It was a domestic situation going on,” Martin added. Kelley’s wife and her parents were not at the church Sunday, authorities said. They could not be reached for interviews Monday.
Among the victims of the massacre, the worst mass shooting in Texas history, were eight members of one family and at least a dozen children, one as young as 18 months old, officials said. One of the victims was pregnant, and officials included the child she was carrying in the death toll of 26.
Officers described finding a scene of unfathomable carnage, where mothers were found sprawled atop children they had tried to shield. Sheriff Joe Tackitt Jr. of Wilson County said deputies found “blood everywhere” inside the church. “Wherever you walked in the church, there was death,” he said.
Kelley, who was dressed in black and wore a skull-face mask, emerged from the church after he was done shooting, then was himself shot by a bystander outside, who hit Kelley in the leg and the torso. Kelley made it back to his car and led the bystander and another man in a dramatic chase that ended in a crash, with Kelley dead behind the wheel. He had shot himself in the head, officials said.
The shootings came about a month after 58 people were killed at a concert in Las Vegas, Nev., and were the latest in a string of mass killings in the United States. They led to another round of calls for more gun restrictions, though they were muted in comparison with previous tragedies, perhaps because gun-control advocates realized that a Republicancontrolled Washington would not give in on gun rights.
Asked about the shooting during his trip to Asia, President Donald Trump said Monday that the shooting was not related to regulations on gun ownership.
“I think that mental health is your problem here,” Trump said at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. “This was a very, based on preliminary reports, very deranged individual.”
Reiterating an argument he has made after previous mass shootings — that more guns, not less, could be the answer — he added, “Fortunately, somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction, otherwise it would have been, as bad it was, it would have been much worse.”
Vice President Mike Pence said on Twitter that he and his wife would visit Sutherland Springs on Wednesday.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., criticized Trump’s response, noting that the bystander did not fire at Kelley until the carnage inside the church was over.
“Let’s be clear — nobody ‘stopped’ this shooting,” he wrote on Twitter. “Twentysix people, including little kids, are dead in one of our country’s worst mass killings.”
Former President Barack Obama, whose own calls for more gun regulations were stymied, said on Twitter, “May God also grant all of us the wisdom to ask what concrete steps we can take to reduce the violence and weaponry in our midst.”
The immediate question Monday was how Kelley had been able to legally purchase his weapons. In his 2012 courtmartial, Kelley admitted that he had repeatedly struck, kicked and choked his wife beginning just months into their marriage. He also said he had repeatedly hit his young stepson’s head with his hands, cracking his skull, said Don Christensen, a retired colonel who was the chief prosecutor for the Air Force.
Federal law lists 11 criteria that would bar someone from buying a gun, including two that would seem to apply to Kelley: conviction of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison — assaulting his stepson, which carried a maximum sentence of five years — and conviction of a domestic violence misdemeanor.
The Defense Department has reported only one domestic violence case to the federal database for gun purchase background checks, records show. It has reported 11,000 service members to the database, but almost all of them were because of dishonorable discharges, which prohibit gun purchases. Kelley, after serving 12 months in a Navy brig in California, received a “bad conduct” discharge, which is not by itself an automatic bar to gun purchases.
Elise Hasbrook, a spokeswoman for Academy Sports + Outdoors, which owns two San Antonio shops that each sold Kelley a gun in the past two years, said “both sales were approved by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.” Kelley had bought two other guns since his court-martial, both in Colorado, authorities said.