Tom Rice: “Dylann Roof is a monster. Dylann Roof should never have been able to buy a gun. Dylann Roof walked into a church in my…”

“Dylann Roof is a monster. Dylann Roof should never have been able to buy a gun. Dylann Roof walked into a church in my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, my birthplace of Charleston, South Carolina, and he slaughtered nine people in a Bible study. I can't imagine a more horrific crime. We all, naturally, look for a response. My friend, Mr. Clyburn, and the majority have noted that thousands of people have wrongfully acquired guns because of the failure of our background check system under what has become known as the Charleston loophole. The stated purpose of this underlying legislation, Mr. Clyburn's legislation, is certainly noble: to close the Charleston loophole. The only problem is that it does not carry out that purpose. Too often here, we take up noble causes; we create legislation with noble names; we pass this legislation to feel better; but the legislation fails to solve the problem in the title. After these horrific murders, the families of the victims sued the Federal Government for allowing this monster to buy a gun. {time} 1015 Charleston Federal District Court Judge Gergen wrote a lengthy opinion in which he laid bare the Federal background check process and its failures in this case, the case of Dylann Roof. His opinion is available for anybody to read. And in his 22-page opinion, he lays out the various structural flaws in the background check system. Most notably, that the FBI maintains four criminal databases.…”