Charleston Church Shooting: Background Check For Dylann Roof Should Have Prevented Gun Sale, FBI Director James Comey Says

The gunman who is accused of shooting and killing nine people last month in a Charleston, South Carolina church should never have been cleared to buy the gun he used in the shooting, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday, according to a new report. Dylann Roof was sold the .45-caliber handgun even though he had an arrest record for drug possession, a fact that should have been caught during the background checking process. “We are all sick this happened,” James Comey told reporters, the New York Times reported.

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Roof, who was indicted on nine murder charges – one for each of his victims, who were all African-Americans -- was allegedly in contact online with white supremacists prior to the shooting. He wrote a racist manifesto on his personal website that all but proved his racial motivations to intentionally target the historic black church because “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet,” he wrote on his website. “Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.