Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Monday night that his committee will conduct oversight over the Defense Department’s investigation into the Air Force’s failure to report the Texas shooter’s criminal history to the FBI.
“The Air Force has acknowledged that after court-martialing and convicting the perpetrator on charges of domestic assault, it failed to report the conviction to the FBI,” McCain said in a statement. “The Senate Armed Services Committee will conduct rigorous oversight of the Department’s investigation into the circumstances that led to this failure. It’s critical that each of the military services take the steps necessary to ensure that similar mistakes have not occurred and will not occur in the future.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a member of the Armed Services Committee, also told CNN Tuesday morning that the Senate should investigate the Air Force’s failure and suggested that the reporting failure is part of a large problem.
“There are court-martials, thousands of them, every year, that involve very serious felonies as well as domestic violence misdemeanors. All of them should be reported,” Blumenthal said on CNN’s “New Day.” “The preliminary information available to me is they’re not being reported, and that is a major lapse in the system.”
The gunman in Sunday’s deadly shooting, Devin Patrick Kelley, had a history of domestic violence. He was discharged for bad conduct from the Air Force in 2014 over a 2012 assault on his ex-wife. Kelley choked his ex-wife and hit her son hard enough to fracture his skull, and served a year of confinement. The Air Force is required by law to report crimes like assault to the FBI but failed to do so.
In other words, close the barn door after the homicidal horse has fled. Well, hopefully future tragedies will be prevented.
And this prevents gun violence in Texas how?
I think it’s called hindsight, not oversight, if done after the fact. Anyway, what should be looked at is the possibility it wasn’t a mistake. Did some “god ole’ boy” in the Air Force shuffle tings around a bit in order to preserve the shooters Second Amendment Right? McCain knows what a BCD ( bad conduct discharge ) is and what you have to do to get one. Things that would put you in jail if you did them as a civilian. Criminal Conduct. why a person would be barred from gun ownership after receiving a Dishonorable Discharge, which usually does not involve violence, but be eligible after getting a BCD, often the result of violent or antisocial behavior, is not a “loop hole”. It’s incompetence and dereliction of duty. The Air Force is not in charge here. We are and we administer that by electing folks to do it. They should have cleaned up that mess long ago. Now they will. After the fact. Someone please remind Senator McCain that half the folks killed in that church were children.
To those who commented above: If there is no investigation, then procedures will not be made to comply with the law. I hate to sound like I might be favorable to the NRA, but efficient, effective enforcement of the laws now on the books would help to reduce casualties from guns. That’s not enough–not nearly enough–but it’s better to use what we now have than to let things slide.
And if he was never in the military, and there was never any Air Force failure to flag him, he STILL would have gotten the gun.
Blow it out your ass, Gramps. Oh, and, uh, “thoughts and prayers”.