Charleston mass shooting victims can sue U.S. over gun purchase: court

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  • wolfwood

    Ultimate Member
    Aug 24, 2011
    1,361
    Good sue the government not the gun makers


    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-sue-us-over-gun-purchase-court-idUSKCN1VK2GO

    On Friday the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government was not immune from liability under either the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) or the Brady Act to prevent handgun violence.

    Friday’s decision by a three-judge panel revived 16 lawsuits that challenged lapses in how the government vetted prospective gun purchasers, including the FBI’s management of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

    William Wilkins, a former chief judge of the 4th Circuit representing the victims, said Congress had charged the FBI with adopting procedures “to stop people like Roof who could obtain assassins’ weapons” from doing so.

    “The government has to do what the law requires,” Wilkins said in an interview. “It failed to do that in this case.”

    Roof, a white supremacist, had been admitted to a Bible study session at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015, where he then used his .45-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol in the shooting.

    Victims said a proper background check would have shown that Roof had recently admitted to drug possession, which would have disqualified him from buying the gun from a federally licensed dealer two months earlier.

    Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote for the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court that no one disputed that a proper check would have stopped Roof.

    But he said U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston was wrong to dismiss the lawsuits on immunity grounds in June 2018, even as Gergel faulted the government’s “abysmally poor policy choices” in managing the background check system.

    Gregory said the case turned on the NICS examiner’s alleged negligence in disregarding mandatory procedures. “The government can claim no immunity in these circumstances,” he wrote.

    Circuit Judge G. Steven Agee partially dissented, saying the government was not immune from Brady Act claims, but that Gergel properly dismissed the FTCA case.

    Roof, now 25, was sentenced to death in January 2017 after being convicted on 33 federal counts related to the shooting, including hate crimes. He pleaded guilty three months later to state murder charges, and was sentenced to nine consecutive life terms without parole.



    https://www.scribd.com/document/424...YfolQ3zVcCNTFgEgcnpP_2Qk-NkYUG0fLK0qzU6sfF0wk
     

    ComeGet

    Ultimate Member
    Sep 1, 2015
    5,911
    Maybe this will help tighten up the current background check system and so prevent future Charlestons, Sutherland Springs and Virginia Techs. We'll see.
     

    cstone

    Active Member
    Dec 12, 2018
    842
    Baltimore, MD
    Awesome. The taxpayers will be paying a settlement for the incompetence of it's employees.

    Congress should stop encouraging citizens in their delusional belief that the government can protect them with more regulation. Does anyone believe that NICS has been improved and this type of cluster fudge can't happen again?

    Backgrounds, when done well and with great attention to detail, do not prevent people from going bad. The background just weeds out the obvious suspects.
     

    Qbeam

    Ultimate Member
    Apr 16, 2008
    6,074
    Georgia
    Assassin's weapon? Stretching a phrase? A syringe could also be an assassin's weapon.


    :sad20:




    Q
     

    spoon059

    Ultimate Member
    Jun 1, 2018
    5,340
    So does this clear the way to make instant millionaires for the victims in the shootings in Baltimorgue, DC and Detroit?
    Doubtful, not too many of those trigger pullers are the ones that made the initial legal purchase...
     

    delaware_export

    Ultimate Member
    Apr 10, 2018
    3,144
    I don’t recall all the details, but my recollection is that some data wasn’t entered into the system proprrrly? and therefore wasn’t available. Iirc.

    Where is the overall responsibility?
    The keepers of the database? The feds?
    The data entry folks? Various jurisdictions? Local? State? Federal? From where the cases are resolved?

    And in the case where someone is wrongly denied rights, where the system failed an innocent person, will they also be able to sue for denial of rights? Would a court allow that case to continue?

    It should interesting if the feds try to deflect to lower jurisdictions for failure to enter data into the system. Or data wrongfully entered which results in denial.
     

    Mark75H

    MD Wear&Carry Instructor
    Industry Partner
    MDS Supporter
    Sep 25, 2011
    17,174
    Outside the Gates
    I predict it will be up to the Supremes to decide this once and for all. The noise at this level is just noise; good money for the lawyers and judges involved. Quoting Omar Little: no more than yourself or his honor here ...
     

    ironpony

    Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 8, 2013
    7,192
    Davidsonville
    What they said.

    Isn’t there a report or article showing the states that currently/properly submit data to nics? I believe there was an older one floating around.

    Would the nics/feds/states failure to regulate a right efficiently give some grounds to move a full ban down the road?
     

    Allen65

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Jun 29, 2013
    7,063
    Anne Arundel County
    I predict it will be up to the Supremes to decide this once and for all. The noise at this level is just noise; good money for the lawyers and judges involved.

    I predict they will once again punt, limiting the decision in the NYSRPA case to an injunction on NY's behavior. And then we're back to lower courts doing the 2A Two Step for at least another decade while virtue-signalling legislators pile arbitrary restriction upon arbitrary restriction until lawful firearms ownership becomes practically impossible.
     

    lazarus

    Ultimate Member
    Jun 23, 2015
    13,680
    Awesome. The taxpayers will be paying a settlement for the incompetence of it's employees.

    Congress should stop encouraging citizens in their delusional belief that the government can protect them with more regulation. Does anyone believe that NICS has been improved and this type of cluster fudge can't happen again?

    Backgrounds, when done well and with great attention to detail, do not prevent people from going bad. The background just weeds out the obvious suspects.

    Actually in a number of cases like this there isn’t a financial finding. Usually it’s that the court ends up binding the executive branch to follow a certain course of action. My agency gets that stuff a lot, like a certain class or individuals are being disadvantaged, so we have to produce special notices in accessible formats upon request, things like that.

    I’d be surprised if there is an actual monetary judgement against the FBI. Probably more of “this is the list of things you must do differently to be in compliance and prove to the court you are doing them”.

    Then again, it may still come with a monetary finding against the FBI also.
     

    Bob A

    όυ φροντισ
    MDS Supporter
    Patriot Picket
    Nov 11, 2009
    30,691
    Maryland requires a purchaser to sign a release to permit access to medical/psychiatric records, but they do not upload this data into NICS. (I don't know if they even actually access the data themselves.)

    Please don't sue me for the inactions of my supposed employees! I can't hire or fire them, or tell them what to do.
     

    pbharvey

    Habitual Testifier
    MDS Supporter
    Dec 27, 2012
    30,160
    Today, the Department of Justice announced that it has reached an agreement in principle to settle the civil cases arising out of the June 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.

    These settlements will resolve claims by 14 plaintiffs arising out of the shooting. Plaintiffs agreed to settle claims alleging that the FBI was negligent when it failed to prohibit the sale of a gun by a licensed firearms dealer to the shooter, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, who wanted to start a “race war” and specifically targeted the 200-year-old historically African-American congregation. For those killed in the shooting, the settlements range from $6 million to $7.5 million per claimant. For the survivors, the settlements are for $5 million per claimant.

    https://breaking911.com/families-in-charleston-church-massacre-reach-88m-settlement-with-doj/
     

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