- The F.B.I. operates the background check system, called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and loopholes have been discovered in it before. One allowed thousands of prohibited buyers to legally purchase firearms over the past decade — and some of those weapons were ultimately used in crimes, according to court records and government documents.
You would think that at this point in the argument over gun laws we could realize that any mistake in the process of accessing a firearm could mean a live lost. I don't know the gun regulation state to state, but I know that things like this definitely shouldn't happen especially that frequently.
I understand why Wal-Mart is not going to sell a gun with an unresolved background check, understand why the individual retailer would. Wal-Mart does not sell firearms to make a statement. They sell them to make money. When people use a gun in a crime that came from Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart isn't interested in hearing that there was an issue with the background check because they didn't err on the side of caution. The firearms retailer is a different story. You don't open up a gun shop and deal with all of the federal and state hurdles to doing so if you don't believe that guns are a fundamental right to your customers. It simply doesn't happen. And one of the reasons that there is a three day limit on how long the FBI can nebulously hold your from legally purchasing a firearm is because that they might do so. So if you, as a store owner and someone who believes very strongly in the 2nd amendment, believe that the FBI is holding up approvals for their own reasons then after the three days you sell the gun. I think it is very interesting that this shooting has turned into a debate on the Confederate flag instead of a gun control debate. I wonder if that's because it's a pistol, or because it happened in a Southern state instead of Connecticut.
I think it turned into a Confederate flag debate, because the media found a new, refreshing angle. While other murders in the U.S. have prejudices at their root, none are so blatant. The talking heads don't have to explain racism, institutional racism, economic inequality, or anything complicated, because Roof openly hated black people.