Sessions orders review of FBI background check database

Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered a wide-ranging review of the FBI background check database after the Air Force killed 26 people at a Texas church, according to a report.

The shooter who had been convicted of domestic violence in the military was able to buy his weapons because his name was not in the database.

Sessions ordered the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to check if other government agencies are failing to report information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Associated Press reported on Thursday.

The database “is critically important to protecting the American public from firearms-related violence,” Sessions wrote in the directive. “It is, however, only as reliable and robust as the information that federal, state, local and tribal government entities make available to it.”

The Pentagon has also launched an investigation into why Devin Kelly’s conviction was not reported to the database.

He was able to buy an AR-15-style assault rifle that he used to mow down congregants at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Nov. 6.

Another report said tens of thousands of names were removed from the database this year after the FBI in February changed the legal interpretation of “fugitive from justice” to one that includes wanted people who have crossed state lines.

Since its creation in 1998, the database has been used to prevent 180,000 people from buying weapons because they came under the “fugitives from justice” designation, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing government statistics.

The designation has long been debated in law enforcement circles but Trump’s Department of Justice narrowed it and in February ordered the FBI to remove all entries of “fugitives from justice” from the database.

The number of people identified under the designation fell from 150,000 to 788, the newspaper reported.