U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released a statement Monday calling for a review of criminal record reporting systems, including the system that allowed a Texas gunman to illegally acquire a firearm.
The statement came after the Air Force announced it would review how the service handled the criminal records of former Airman Devin P. Kelley, who killed at least 26 people with a military-style rifle in a Texas church on Sunday.
In 2012, Kelley was convicted by a general court martial on two charges of domestic assault against his wife and toddler stepson under Article 128 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. After serving 12 months in confinement at Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in California, he was dismissed from the Air Force with a bad conduct discharge.
Under federal law, Kelley should not have been able to purchase or possess firearms. The service seems to have failed to report his conviction to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for inclusion in the National Criminal Information Center database, as it was required to do, Reed said.
“We need to get to the bottom of this case specifically, and every Service needs to investigate to determine if there are systemic issues that result in failure to report information on violent crimes, particularly domestic violence cases, to the FBI and the NCIC database,” Sen. Reed said. “All necessary steps should be taken, administratively and legislatively, to ensure that such a failure does not happen again.”