Air Force finds dozens of errors in background-check reporting

A review by the U.S. Air Force has found several dozen cases in which the military failed to report service members charged with or convicted of serious crimes to the federal gun background-check database, Air Force officials said Tuesday.

The review came after the Air Force disclosed that it had failed to report the domestic violence conviction of Devin P. Kelley, the gunman who opened fire at a church in Texas earlier this month. Under federal law, Kelley’s court-martial conviction for domestic assault should have prevented him from purchasing at a gun store the rifle he used in the attack, as well as other guns he acquired over the past four years.

After the Air Force admitted on Nov. 6 that officials at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico had failed to report the results of Kelley’s court-martial to the federal background database, it launched an investigation into how many other serious incidents had not been reported.

Although officials have examined only a portion of cases that should have been reported, several dozen have already surfaced that were not reported as required.

“The error in the Kelley case was not an isolated incident, and similar reporting lapses occurred at other locations,” the Air Force said in a statement. “Although policies and procedures requiring reporting were in place, training and compliance measures were lacking.”

There have been about 60,000 incidents in the Air Force since 2002 involving service members that should have been reported to the federal backgroundcheck database. All of those incidents are now being reviewed by Air Force officials to see which ones were required to be reported, and how many of those actually were reported.