Existing laws wouldn’t have stopped Dylann Roof’s gun purchase
When police arrested Charleston church massacre suspect Dylann Storm Roof in his car in Shelby, North Carolina, last week they found a handgun — presumably the weapon used to shoot and kill nine worshippers gathered inside the historic Emanuel AME Church.
Nothing would have prevented Roof from buying or owning it, despite a pending drug charge, according to federal gun laws.
Contrary to some media reports, Roof’s pending drug charge was not a felony. The charge is a misdemeanor, according to a review of court records, including a copy of the warrant obtained by The Greenville News.
A spokeswoman with the State Law Enforcement Division said Roof’s criminal record incorrectly listed the pending charge as a felony due to a data entry error. The record has since been corrected to reflect it is a misdemeanor, she said.
That charge, filed March 2, was for possession of prescription drug Suboxone, which a police officer found when he questioned Roof for strange behavior at stores in the Columbiana Centre shopping mall near Columbia on Feb. 28, according to an incident report and arrest warrant.
The case is pending in a Lexington circuit court, records show.
If Roof had walked into a gun shop, a pending felony drug charge would have shown up on a mandatory federal background check and would have blocked the sale. A pending misdemeanor charge would not.
If he purchased the gun through a private transaction, no background check would have been required.
Almost immediately after he was apprehended, agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began to investigate how Roof obtained the gun, said Gerod King, spokesman for the bureau’s Charlotte office.
That inquiry has not triggered any ATF investigation into South Carolina gun shops related to the Charleston shooting, King said, adding that the agency has completed its investigation and turned over its findings to the FBI.
“We looked into the gun to determine where it was purchased, who it was purchased by, and we passed that information on to the FBI,” King said, declining to provide details.
“We are under the impression that they are going to present all of that to the public when they are ready to do so,” he said.
Repeated attempts to contact the FBI office in Columbia were unsuccessful Friday.
The Charleston Police Department told The Greenville News it would not say anything about how Roof got the gun or where he purchased it, citing the ongoing investigation.
Roof’s father told investigators that his son owned a .45-caliber handgun and investigators found .45-caliber shells at the crime scene, according to arrest affidavit’s filed with warrants charging Roof with nine counts of murder and a related weapons offense.
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Various stories have circulated in media reports about how Roof obtained the gun. An uncle said it had been given to him as a birthday present by his father. Family members later said they’d given him money for his birthday, which he used to purchase the gun.
Citing anonymous law enforcement sources, CNN reported that Roof bought a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun from a Charleston-area gun shop in April. USA TODAY reported it was legally purchased at a store near Columbia.
Roof is an unemployed high school dropout who listed his parents’ address in the tiny town of Eastover, near Columbia, as his home, though friends said he was in and out of touch with family and sometimes lived in his car.
One friend, Joey Meek, told ABC News he had known Roof for seven years, but when he reconnected with him recently Roof had changed.
Meek said Roof talked about how “black people was taking over the country” and that he always carried a .45-caliber Glock in his car.
Meek grew worried after he said Roof talked about “planning to do something crazy” and at one point, Meek took and hid the gun, but returned it the next day because Meek was on probation and didn’t want to get in trouble, Meek told the New York Times.
In comments addressing the shooting on Thursday, President Barack Obama revived the gun control debate.
“We do know that once again innocent people were killed, in part, because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun,” Obama said.
“It is in our power to do something about it,” he said, acknowledging that politics in Washington would make that difficult.
In South Carolina, legislators struggled to insert gun control language in a domestic violence bill this year. The move was staunchly opposed by a majority of legislators — including many Upstate conservatives — who believe gun rights should be protected.
The domestic violence law leaves it up to a judge to decide whether a man convicted of beating a woman should lose his rights to own a gun. The rights could be earned back over time depending on the severity of the crime.
In light of the Charleston attack, legislators in the state’s Black Caucus told USA Today they plan to file several bills in the next legislative session to address gun control.
Staff writer Anna Lee contributed to this report.