AFTER THE FACT

U.S. Military Rushes to Add 4,000+ New Names to the Gun-Ban List

After the loophole exposed by the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church massacre.

The U.S. military has hurried 4,000 names onto the federal list of those prohibited from buying a gun following the Sutherland Springs, Texas, massacre in November in which a former airman shot and killed more than two-dozen people. The shooter, Devin Kelley, had been discharged from the military for assaulting his wife, but the Air Force failed to enter his name into a database that would have prevented him from buying firearms from licensed gun stores. In the months since the massacre, the U.S. Department of Defense has rushed to fully update the FBI’s database, which is used to track personnel kicked out of the military and banned from owning firearms. A CNN investigation found the backlog was so huge that the names of 4,284 dishonorably discharged personnel have been added to the list in just three months—a 38 percent leap, and a total of 15,597.