In 2015, a male white supremacist entered Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and shot and killed nine black Americans (and injured three others) in their place of worship during a Bible study. On Friday, a federal appeals court ruled that survivors of this mass shooting can sue the U.S. government because its negligence allowed the shooter to buy the gun, to begin with.
How did this work? Basically, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government was not immune under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) or the Brady Act. A three-judge panel looked at 16 lawsuits that called to question the means by which the government decides who can and cannot buy a gun. Basically, the government’s vetting process and how reliable it actually is in reality.
If the white supremacist in question had an appropriate, complete background check, he wouldn’t have been qualified to buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer. In this particular case, the shooter had admitted to drug possession in the past, which should have been a disqualifier. But, in layman’s terms, because of “confusion” on behalf of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) Examiner (this is the negligence part) and its subsequent delay of the review, the firearms dealer sold the shooter the gun anyway.
“The government has to do what the law requires,” Williams Wilkins, who represents the victims and is a former chief judge himself, said in an interview as reported by Yahoo. “It failed to do that in this case.”
Previously, a lower court dismissed this case. But on Friday, the 4th Circuit revived the case and ruled that the lower court judge was incorrect. At this point, the 4th Circuit ruling can (in theory) also be appealed in the future.
"The families are one step closer to closure," Wilkins told BuzzFeed News in an interview on Friday. "What this case said was that the government by law is tasked with developing and implementing and maintaining a system that identifies individuals who by law are not entitled to possess a weapon ... every case is tied to the facts, but this case says that the government is not immune from discharging its responsibilities."
The shooter, who is now 25-years-old, was sentenced to death on January 2017. He was convicted on 33 federal counts, including hate crimes. Three months later, he also pleaded guilty to state murder charges. He was then sentenced to nine consecutive life terms without parole. He is currently being held at a high-security facility, the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
This is a tremendous amount of justice that’s finally being served, though it’s still one step in a long, long process. On the bigger picture, it’s consistently been near-impossible for survivors of mass shootings to sue the government. None of this brings back lives lost, but it’s a step in the right direction for accountability—and hopefully, serious legislative change.