“Devin Patrick Kelley, the 26-year-old suspect in the attack on a Texas Baptist Church in which 26 people were killed and 20 wounded, is believed to have killed himself following a high-speed chase, Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt told CBS News on Monday.” As we mentioned earlier, the first responders outside the Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church yesterday were two ordinary citizens.
We know that Stephen Willeford grabbed his gun and shot Kelley has he left the church. Willeford and Johnnie Langendorf then chased Kelley at speeds as high as 95mph while on the phone with 911. But they apparently weren’t just chasing him.
“There was some gunfire exchanged, I believe, on the roadway also, and then (the shooter’s vehicle) wrecked out,”
Tackitt told correspondent Jeff Glor. “At this time we believe that he had a self-inflicted gunshot wound, after he wrecked out.”
We also now know that Kelley had applied for and was denied a Texas concealed handgun permit. This was likely due to the circumstances surrounding his discharge from the Air Force.
A former airman with the US Air Force, Kelley, received a “bad conduct” discharge from the military after charges of assault against his spouse and child led him to be court-martialed.
So Kelley should not have been able to legally own a firearm, let alone obtain a Texas CHL. However . . .
The federal government’s firearm transaction record, which buyers must legally fill out, asks about felony convictions. Kelley bought a Ruger AR-556 rifle, used in the attack on the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in April of last year from an Academy Sports & Outdoors store in San Antonio, a law-enforcement official told CNN.
The purchase of the gun took place two years after Kelley had been court-martialed, imprisoned, and discharged from the military.
So Kelley likely lied on his form 4473. Not that anyone has ever dared to do that before. And two years after his discharge, shouldn’t the FBI’s NICS system have flagged that? Does the FBI NICS system even interface with UCMJ information?
Wherever the failure in the system, someone’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.
We’ve heard for years and will continue to hear more from our friends in the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex about the importance of closing the so-called “gun show” loophole. They claim that “universal background checks” are a must in keeping firearms out of the hands of prohibited persons.
Yet virtually every high profile crime in recent years has been committed by someone who has either bought his firearms legally or, as seems to be the case with Kelley, lied on his background check form. So Senator Manchin, Senator Toomey, Gabby Giffords, Shannon Watts and Ladd Everitt, please explain to us exactly how universal background checks will change…anything.