WASHINGTON — The man accused of killing nine people in an historically black South Carolina church last month should not have been able to buy a gun, the F.B.I. said Friday in what was the latest acknowledgment of flaws in the national background check system.
A loophole in the check system allowed the man, Dylann Roof, to buy the .45-caliber handgun despite his having previously admitted to drug possession, the bureau said.
“We are all sick this happened,” said the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey. “We wish we could turn back time.”
Mr. Roof now faces murder charges in a case that investigators say was racially motivated. Mr. Roof, who is white, is charged with killing nine people at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston.
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. That problem stemmed from the three-day period the government has to determine whether someone is eligible to buy a gun.
After a 2007 shooting in which 33 people died at Virginia Tech University, investigators discovered that the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, also should not have been able to buy a gun because a court had previously declared him to be a danger to himself. The shooting led to legislation aimed at improving the background check system.
