Dylann Roof Wanted to Buy Assault Rifle

A Columbia, South Carolina, police officer found parts of an AR-15 rifle in the trunk of Dylann Roof’s car in March, according to a police department report. Roof—who also had six 40-bullet ammo clips in the car—allegedly told the cop he wanted to buy the AR-15, a civilian semi-automatic version of a weapon used by the U.S. military. A weapon like that would have let him shoot dozens of people without reloading, raising questions of whether he’d planned a far bigger attack. “Roof wanted even more ability to kill than he had,” said South Carolina State Rep. Joe Neal. “This suggests to me that if he had had access to a more powerful weapon, he would have killed a lot more people.”