Texas Governor Gregg Abbott told CNN this morning that Sutherland Spring mass murderer Devin Patrick Kelley had been denied a Texas CHL. That could have been due to his discharge from the Air Force over domestic violence charges.
Texas church gunman Devin Kelley tried to get a license to carry a gun in Texas, but the state denied him, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, citing the director of Texas’ Department of Public Safety.“So how was it that he was able to get a gun? By all the facts that we seem to know, he was not supposed to have access to a gun,” Abbott told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “So how did this happen?”
Wait. You mean that prohibited individuals who can’t legally own firearms can still acquire them? And actually carry them? Why, it’s almost as if all the gun control laws in the world wouldn’t have stopped something like what happened yesterday.
Seems the threat of an AR15 ban would both send a collective shutter through the gun community to behave, but also boost gun sales and values especially those of the black variety.
“shudder” not shutter.
There’s never a cop around when you need one, and yet, the self-appointed spelling police always seem to be johhny-on-the-spot. Curious, that.
Too bad yesterday’s killer didn’t deliver instead an enfilade of menacing, albeit misspelled, missives to the churchgoers. We really could’ve used you.
Smell the coffee! It’s the internet age (so long, Aquarius…). You now get both the spelling police and the police police paying attention to you online, all for one low price!
No, I meant shutter. Think about it.
I guess my puns are a little too deep for some.
Blah blah blah. STFU.
What “community” are you saying should behave? And what do you mean by behave?
Oh, just things like AR15 open carry while in overtly public spaces especially while wearing a full battle loadout. And James Yeager’s mouth. And youtube videos of lovingly stroking a black gun and pile of mags while complaining about the BLM. Stuff like that.
CT. Thanks
What does this attack have anything to do with “open carrying” AR15s?
This guy didn’t “open carry”. He merely walked into a GFZ and started shooting people.
Does it make you feel safer when it is the AUTHORITY open carrying AR 15’s in public places as opposed to the citizens ?
If your answer is yes , I believe you are misguided and in need of a common sense debate .
If your answer is no , I accept your fear and have no debate to offer , just please try and accept my position , which would seem to be contrary to yours .
CNN (I know, fake news mostly) says Kelley got his Ruger AR from a sporting store. This means he lied on his 4473, but was still approved. Seriously, what is going on at the ATF?
What is going on at the ATF? They’re working day and night, tooth and nail, on my four silencer stamp applications, three of them for a year now. Twelve months. Having already looked me over and approved me twice. Got to look at all the paper I filled out six times now, and the twelve photos of me, and the twelve sets of fingerprints. And if I submit another application they will have to do it all over again, just like it’s never been done. The trend is each time they do it, the same thing, it takes them longer. Gotta feel for them!
Must be discrimination John. My stamps have never taken longer than three months. With the longest taking exactly 90 days from mail out to in-store pickup.
I’m at 11 months on 2 items right now. Which has been typical for the last 2 years.
I just got my last one in time for hunting last week.
9 months and 6 days.
Yes I am sure they are spending lots of time on your four applications… They should finish up with yours so they can get working on mine, sheesh!
I have a feeling the apps just sit in a huge pile. The examiners go to long lunch, take some breaks, stretch, watch some Facebook videos, then take one off the stack, and, approved! Oops, it’s 4:30pm, time to head out!
It is silly each approval, background check, and tax is applied to each weapon, if I send in one this week, and five more next week, logic would say you could just approve them all if the first looked good. A frequent nfa pass. But this wasn’t designed for security, logic, or “customer service,” it is a ban on scary objects by way of making the cost high, inconvenient, unmarketable, with stiff penalties if you don’t play by the rules.
One could possibly argue a yearly “NFA license” would probably make more sense from a convenience standpoint, if you are good for one you are good for all, but I don’t think I want them further enshrining the NFA system, chances are it would get “adjusted for inflation” and become a further burden rather than fixed. And then they would probably confiscate everything if you didn’t renew in time.
But from a security standpoint if I am cleared to own one SBR, why not ten? Why is it legal to put a short barrel upper on my registered SBR lower but suddenly becomes a crime if I were to put it on a different non SBR lower? But truthfully they don’t think we are safe or responsible with weapons, because there guns themselves are inherently evil.
While the fibbies can’t hand off NICS checks to the summer intern to do during their lunch break, it appears F-Troop can put NFA items on the go slow.
I don’t know texas law or its CCW/CHP requirement but one might be able to own a gun but without the permit one cannot carry it. Does the reverse apply. Are criteria of prohibited from carrying the same as ownership?
Texans with knowledge please give some insight.
I’m a bad speller so I don’t police anyone there but I do have a linguistic comment.
We “work” day and night but we “fight” tooth and nail.
Not a lawyer. Just an adopted Texan.
You don’t need a license to keep a gun in your home, car or place of business. If you are a federally prohibited person, that trumps Texas law (obvs). In that case, you cannot possess a firearm.
Robert, Robert… you must not have had your second cup of coffee yet. Anyone CAN possess any sort of weapon, whether anyone else likes it or not. Being a “prohibited person” merely puts a layer of government “shall not” on the deal. It seems most murderers, robbers and rapists don’t pay a lot of attention to that prohibition… So they CAN possess a gun, even without permission – obviously.
No. You can own a firearm in Texas without a License to Carry or the older Concealed Carry Permit. Neither applies to the open carry of long guns.
Yes, but do the reasons for denying a permit mirror what might make one a prohibited person?
Esemwy, typically, yes.
It seems the Air Force doesn’t do its NICS compliance to the extent states are expected to. Reports list the gun store at which Devon purchased his rifle. I assume a NICS check was done. Apparently the AF never submitted the two misdemeanor domestic assault convictions, which should have triggered the Lautenberg amendment prohibition. No?
Cue the calls from Pelosi to eliminate the 3 day response time limit.
BATF is often very good at screwing things up, but on this one, I reluctantly give them a tentative pass.
If he was really a prohibited person (media could be full of shit) My money is on, the Air Force not having his record squared away with NICS or a dim wit clerk at the big box store fucking something up on the 4473, and NICS call, resulting in an illegal transfer.
Bad conduct discharge doesn’t put you on the prohibited list. The domestic conviction should have shown up in NICS. Apparently it did show up in the Texas CCW background check.
I should probably amend my post by saying that there are some other possibilities. For instance, he Kelley could have used a fake ID (or an ID of a clean person that looked like him) to buy the gun. Of course that in itself is a crime.
Another possibility is that the gun was purchased from Academy sports, but by a different person, who then went on to privately sell it or give it to Kelley.
Early news is usually wrong, especially if it comes from the Fake News Network, so I’ll wait a bit to see what actually happened. Maybe the ATF did its job, after all.
Or he bought the AR while the info making him a prohibited person was still percolating through the system, and when he later applied for the CHL, it had finished percolating.
But we must “do something”! It’s for the children, after all.
/sarc off
I had read that he was a security guard at some point since his discharge. That military discharge should have prevented him from getting a license for that, too, whether armed or unarmed. Maybe he was a “security guard” in a more general sense, for an independent business, and not through an actual bona fide security company?
Yup, security guard at a water park.
there’s questions now whether he had a DD or a ‘other than honorable’ bad conduct discharge, either way the domestic assault charges should have kept him from legally purchasing a firearm.
He didn’t just get charged, he actually did time, just over a year, for the assault of his wife and child.
My prayers go out the those that lost loved ones.
Evil men will do horrible things with no reason other than to harm the innocent.
Evil never dies.
Each of us must be prepared to challenge it.
Just one more law, tax, BAN. Then criminals, terrorists and nut jobs will just vanish. Crime will end, prisons and jails can be closed. All that money can be used for free social programs. Ah UTOPIA achieved.
How did it happen? Bureaucratic f*ckery. Let’s not pretend this is new, or unusual. I’m not even talking about the times when medical or legal authorities had a judgement call to make on limited information, and flubbed it, like with Omar Mateen, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Adam Lanza, James Holmes, or Elliott Rodger. I’m talking about the times all the pieces were right there and nobody could be bothered to do their job, like Aaron Alexis, Seung-Hui Cho, or Dylann Roof.
Hmmm…its almost like, if a person were deemed to dangerous to possess a firearm, that person shouldn’t be allowed to walk free. I mean, they put down known dangerous dogs, don’t they? That neckbeard looking sh!tbag could have waited till church let out and driven over that many people, and the media wouldn’t have given two thoughts about any kind of regulation.
Really??
Your saying over 20,000 gun control laws don’t work on criminals.
My word.
Why does TTAG persist in broadcasting this murderer’s name in banner headlines and show his photo (not here, but in other postings)? Why does any news media do so when it serves only to incent others suicidal losers desperate for notoriety to do the same? Yesterday morning this murderer was a pathetic nobody. Today, thanks to TTAG and everyone else in the news media, he is infamous. Congrats, you gave him what he wanted.
Please, in the future publish the name of mass murderers only once buried in the body of an article for the record. After that never publish the murderer’s name or show his image.TTAG, of all media outlets, should know better — that it is the motivation that animates these mass shootings, not the inanimate object used to commit the acts. And yet TTAG contributes to fueling the motive…
That kind of posturing (“virtue signalling”) doesn’t do anything but lead to less-clear headlines. Psychos are going to do what they do for whatever reason they do it.
There is nothing unclear about calling the perpetrator as the Southerland Springs Murderer. Headlines often use far more opaque references. Best case scenario would have been for this piece of trash to drive down a country lane and used his AR to end his own pathetic, meaningless life. Instead he thought he would give meaning to his existence by taking a chapel filled with worshipers with him. If he didn’t have the promise of that payoff he would have ended his life alone.
Virtue signaling? That sounds like a term a Leftwing sociology professor would concoct.
TTAG is not putting the murder’s name in the headlines or posting his photo for clarity’s sake. They are pimping his name out for clicks. By so doing they are contributing to the next pathetic suicidal loser who decides to do the same thing. Which will lead to more calls for gun control. Eventually so-called assault weapons, high capacity magazines, and whatever else the Left wants to ban will get outlawed, and TTAG will have helped them do it.
“Virtue signaling” isn’t something I’d heard before the last year or so but it’s a useful term. It’s when someone says something just to signal that they’re on the right side of the ‘conversation’.
Your post is an example – it doesn’t do anything helpful, but it shows that you’re thinking the Right Way.
Eric, I have known Robert Farago for along time, longer than TTAG has been around and I am somewhat vested in TTAG’s continued success. I know that Farago perfectly understand how words and images can motivate behavior. I know that he understands that the first thing one does to extinguish unwanted behavior is to remove positive reinforcements of that behavior. This is not pop sociology but well established conditioning technique with decades of peer reviewed research behind it. If we want to reduce the number of mass shootings that are driving our country toward enacting draconian gun control laws then we need to stop turning mass murderers into celebrities. Responsible news media needs to stop making headlines out of these monsters and treat them like obscure footnotes.
You may say that everyone else is doing it so what difference does it make TTAG does not. And I would say, but the rest of the news media wants gun control and TTAG purports to support the 2A. TTAG should be leading the crusade to stop making infamous legends out of gun-toting murderers.
Drudge Reporting is calling this guy as the “Church Killer” in their headlines. That works too.
For those blaming the ATF on the purchase: NICS is FBI
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