Sutherland Springs could have, and should have, been spared this nightmare quite easily.
The United States Air Force, which by the way, exists to protect us, KNEW this former member had issues that made him INELIGIBLE to buy a gun of any kind...and yet they failed to take the very simple step of notifying the database that is meant to keep track of people that are undesireable as gun owners.
If this is not proof positive that the vetting process for gun ownership is very flawed, then I cannot imagine what it will take. The murder of children and the elderly is not enough?
Then how about pregnant women, the disabled, war vets???
Look...I am NOT against guns in general. I enjoy target shooting. I don't hunt, but would if needed, and do not begrudge those who hunt for meat at all. I am a pretty good shot with a rifle and owned a .45 at one time before I had to sell it. I don't hate guns...I do not have ANY issue with everyday citizens owning hunting rifles and for home securiry, hand guns.
But there is NO legitimate reason to own assault weapons, none.
Now before you curse me, I grasp that many people are preparing for Armageddon and the probable necessity of having to rapidly shoot your former neighbors so that they don't steal your supplies, etc. This could indeed be the end of times, given that Donald Trump.is President and all. If there was ever a sign of the Apocalypse, I think that could be it.
But what if it comes instead as a self- fulfilling prophesy? What if actively and aggressively preparing for it, actually triggers it?
Many of these crazed individuals doing these terrible things, die before we know their excuses for their actions. What if all this "prepping" has whipped them into their homicidal/suicidal frenzies?
What if, instead of investing in a very dark future, we invest in keeping it from ever happening? Armageddon is not an inevitability, people. Just because it is written down, does not make it a foregone conclusion.
At the risk of now also angering Christians, all holy books speak in metaphor, not facts. They warn about missteps and bad deeds. They were written by those that would control the actions of the masses by scaring them into good behavior. So okay, let's start behaving well instead of taking up arms against our brothers in preparation for killing them?
I know the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. So own a hand gun, hunting rifles, etc. But let's also stand up and say enough is enough to assault weapons, at least until they can stop these awful massacres, you must stop them. Please stop them
Just sayin
Dragonfly Davis
See article below
U.S.
Air Force Error Allowed Texas Gunman to Buy Weapons
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Tex. — A day after a gunman massacred parishioners in a small Texas church, the Air Force admitted on Monday that it had failed to enter the man’s domestic violence court-martial 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 Mr. Kelley from legally purchasing the military-style rifle and three other guns he acquired in the last 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, the Air Force secretary, and Gen. David Goldfein, the 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.
Mr. Kelley, who was dressed in all black and wore a skull-face mask, emerged from the church after he was done shooting, then was met by gunfire from a bystander outside, who hit Mr. Kelley in the leg and the torso. Mr. Kelley made it back to his car and led the bystander and another man in a dramatic chase that ended in a crash, with Mr. Kelley dead behind the wheel. He had shot himself in the head, officials said.
The shootings came a little over a month after 58 people were killed at a concert in Las Vegas, 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 Republican-controlled Washington would not give in on gun rights.
Asked about the shooting during his trip to Asia, President Trump said Monday that the shooting was not related to regulations on gun ownership.
“I think that mental health is your problem here,” Mr. 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.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump was asked during a news conference in South Korea whether he would support “extreme vetting” of gun buyers, comparable to the vetting his administration has sought to impose on visitors from some predominantly Muslim countries.
“If you did what you’re suggesting, there would have been no difference three days ago,” the president replied, “and you might not have had that very brave person who happened to have a gun or a rifle in his truck go out and shoot him and hit him and neutralize him.”
“If he didn’t have a gun, instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead,” Mr. Trump said, reiterating an argument he has made after previous mass shootings — that more guns, not less, could be the answer.
Vice President Mike Pence said on Twitter that he and his wife would visit Sutherland Springs on Wednesday.
Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, criticized Mr. Trump’s response on Monday, noting that the bystander did not fire at Mr. Kelley until the carnage inside the church was over.
“Let’s be clear — nobody ‘stopped’ this shooting,” he wrote on Twitter. “26 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 on Monday was how Mr. Kelley had been able to legally purchase his weapons. In his 2012 court-martial, Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Department of Defense 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. Mr. 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 Mr. Kelley a gun in the last two years, said “both sales were approved by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.” Mr. Kelley had bought two other guns since his court-martial, both in Colorado, the authorities said.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas told CNN that Mr. Kelley had been rejected when he applied for a license to carry a handgun in Texas. State officials did not specify why he was rejected, and a carrying license is not required to purchase a firearm from a gun shop so long as the buyer passes the federal background check.
“By all the facts that we seem to know, he was not supposed to have access to a gun, so how did this happen?” Mr. Abbott said.
The authorities in Comal County, which includes Mr. Kelley’s hometown, New Braunfels, also released records on Monday that showed Mr. Kelley had been the subject of an investigation for sexual assault and rape by force in 2013. The investigation ended without the filing of any charges.
On Monday, Sheriff Tackitt of Wilson County, where First Baptist is located, described Mr. Kelley’s horrific and methodical path through the church. After firing from outside the building, Mr. Kelley entered the church, and fired his weapon from side to side as he paced through the room, the sheriff said. Among those killed were members of three generations of the Holcombe family, including the guest preacher and his wife, and an 18-month-old girl named Noah.
“There was nothing anyone could do until he came out,” Sheriff Tackitt said.
After Mr. Kelley stepped out of the church, a man outside was waiting with his own rifle. They fired at each other, and Mr. Kelley was hit twice. He then drove off in his car.
The bystander, who identified himself Monday night as Stephen Willeford, flagged down a nearby driver, Johnnie Langendorff, and they gave chase, at speeds upward of 90 miles an hour, Mr. Langendorff said. Mr. Kelley contacted his father from his cellphone during the chase to tell him that he had been shot, according to law enforcement officials, telling his father that he “didn’t think he was going to make it.” He soon crashed and was found dead behind the wheel with three gunshot wounds, including his own shot to his head.
Sheriff Tackitt called Mr. Willeford a “hero.”
In an interview with a local television station, Mr. Willeford said his daughter had heard gunshots from the church and alerted him. He retrieved his rifle and went to the church.
Mr. Willeford grew emotional as he spoke about what he saw and heard.
“Every time I heard a shot I knew that probably represented a life,” he said. “I was scared to death, I was. I was scared for me and I was scared for every one of them. And I was scared for my own family that lived less than a block away.”
“I’m no hero, I am not,” he said. “I think my God, my Lord protected me and gave me the skills to do what needed to be done.”
“I just wish I could have gotten there faster,” he said.
David Montgomery reported from Sutherland Springs, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Jose A. DelReal from New York. Reporting was contributed by Manny Fernandez from Houston; Alan Blinder from New Braunfels, Tex.; Susan Anasagasti from Sutherland Springs; Adam Goldman from Washington; and Mark Landler from Seoul, South Korea. Jack Begg and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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