Timing is everything, but one more gun law will fix it

The First Baptist Church shooter had an interesting history. Pulling this together from assorted news reports:

  • He was reportedly on “high doses of ‘psych’ meds” in 6th through 9th grade.
  • As an adult, he dated a 13 year-old girl.
  • The police were called because he stalked the girl when she dropped him.
  • In the Air Force, while in pre-trial detention, he was committed to a psychiatric hospital (from which he escaped) because he was deemed a threat to himself and others. Somehow, the Air Force never reported the committal to NICS.
  • In a General Court Martial, he was convicted of multiple counts of domestic violence (including cracking a child’s skull). Somehow the Air Force failed to report the felony-equivalent domestic violence conviction to NICS.
  • There was an open sexual assault investigation of him that police dropped in late 2013 because they thought he’d left the state.
  • Then the police responded to another complaint against him (domestic abuse) at the same address in early 2014. Yet somehow the police couldn’t figure out that he was still in state.

That an adult was dating a 13yo is concerning enough (and where were her parents?). Was it a sexual relationship? If so, then he committed sexual assault. Where were the police?

But one more gun control law will fix it.

The timing of the asshole‘s military and civilian legal interactions raises more questions. In June 2012, he was facing charges in the at Holloman AFB in New Mexico. He was committed to a New Mexico psychiatric hospital in June. He escaped — that’s desertion –and was recaptured on June 13, 2012. He was sent to a Miramar Navy brig for pre-trial confinement, presumably after his escape and recapture; otherwise I have to wonder why he’d be sent from California back to New Mexico for committal.

In November 2012, he was convicted and sentenced to a year confinement, which he served in the Miramar brig until June 2013. Clearly, he was credited with pre-trial time served despite having escaped custody. For three counts of felony-equivalent assault, including breaking a child’s skull?

An appeals court upheld the conviction in 2013. When in 2013 isn’t clear.

Upon release from the brig “in early June of 2013”, he was placed on unpaid leave, apparently through the end of his term of enlistment in early 2014. Well, it’s not like the Air Force wanted him back (and oddly enough, I was stationed at Holloman AFB in the ’80s, and was detailed to maintain custody of another deserter, whom we didn’t want either).

Almost immediately — June 17, 2013, just seven months after his initial conviction — he was under investigation in New Braunfels, Texas for alleged rape. I would expect the police to run a background check on him, but since his committal and conviction were never logged, he would come up clean. Perhaps if the Air Force had done its job, the police would have seen a history of violence towards women and taken this case more seriously and arrested him.

In early 2014, the police were called to the same address again, on a complaint against him. They failed to notice that he was the same person they assumed had fled the state during another investigation. Since the Air Force never reported his committal and conviction, and the police hadn’t arrested him for the rape complaint, apparently he still looked clean. So he was allowed to roam the streets.

On August 1, 2014 he was cited for animal cruelty. With no other apparent criminal record (thanks, USAF and New Braunfels PD) a judge fined him and gave him deferred probation.

On November 13, 2014, he registered to vote in Colorado. He was able to do this because no one had bothered to record his committal and felony-equivalent crimes.

All we know about the next few years is that he lived in Texas and Colorado and bought guns. Because no one recorded his committal and conviction in NICS, or investigated other complaints more carefully… because he seemed to have a clean record each time. He tried to get a Texas carry license but was denied because they apparently noticed his Bad Conduct Discharge (my reading of Texas law is that anyone with less than an Honorable discharge is ineligible). At least someone did his job.

On November 5, 2017 — reportedly angry with yet another woman — killed 26 men, women, and children, and wounded 20 more. Because various authorities failed to apply the laws they expect all of us — who didn’t commit these crimes — to obey. The authorities failed to notice his criminal record, mental health record, and his history of of disturbing and criminal behavior with women.

But more bans, limits, and background checks for us — who didn’t commit these crimes — will fix it.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

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5 thoughts on “Timing is everything, but one more gun law will fix it”

  1. We don’t need more laws. We don’t even need the ones we have now. NICS, in its current state, is hopelessly broken.

    The MSM has been reporting the elephant in the room, even if they are unaware of it. A database is only as good as the data fed into it. In IT, the concept is known as “GIGO”: garbage in, garbage out.

    Background checks (“preemptively-prove-your-innocence” checks) can only work if ALL disabling convictions for ALL offenders are reported. If ANY slip through, the system has failed.

    Even without that, 94% of NICS delays are false positives, which means that — assuming valid data (which is a stretch) — the FBI is nevertheless doing a less-then-stellar job of accurately differentiating good guys from known bad guys.

    It’s nice to see the MSM admitting that the killer “should have” been reported, and “should not have” been able to purchase firearms under existing laws. I have no expectation they’ll take the next logical step and conclude that as it is, NICS is broken. Rather, I expect they’ll parrot the Controllers’ line: that we need more gun laws, more PPYI checks, more restrictions, on the ~99.9814% of us that didn’t do anything wrong.

    1. To clarify another elephant in the room: The Controllers’ and the MSM will say we need more PPYI checks to stop bad guys, which will be run through the very system they just admitted FAILED to stop a bad guy, with tragic results.

      The obliviousness to the inanity of this idea is mind-boggling.

        1. I for one love the term! It really puts in perspective the outrageousness of the concept, especially given that in America, “innocent until proven guilty” is supposed to be the law of the land.

          I don’t remember where I first heard it phrased that way (it may have been from you! — probably on your other site), but I use it all the time.

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