When Fox News reported that the Biden Justice Department had reached “a $144 million agreement in principle” to settle civil lawsuits filed against the Air Force in the aftermath of a 2017 mass shooting in Texas, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms called it “one more black mark in Joe Biden’s long record of failed gun control policies.”
The lawsuits, filed by dozens of plaintiffs, alleged the Air Force was negligent for failing to report the criminal record of Devin Patrick Kelley, who was convicted of domestic violence while serving in 2012. He was discharged in 2014 for bad conduct. The conviction would have prevented him from buying and owning firearms. Because the conviction was not reported to the National Instant Check System (NICS), Kelley was able to successfully lie on a Form 4473 in April 2016, when he bought the rifle used in the attack.
All of this was spelled out by the CCRKBA in a scathing statement noting Kelley’s violations occurred while Joe Biden was vice president under Barack Obama, and also served as Obama’s “gun czar” as head of a task force “which was supposed to provide proposals to reform gun laws.”
As noted in the Fox News report, “U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez said in 2021 that had the government done its job and entered Kelley’s history into the database, ‘it is more likely than not that Kelley would have been deterred from carrying out the Church shooting.’”
Back in 2012, The Guardian noted in a story about the gun task force, “Barack Obama…put the issue of tackling gun violence at the heart of his second term, placing his vice-president in charge of a task force to produce concrete proposals on the reform of firearm laws within weeks.”
The irony of this timing is only becoming relevant now, more than a decade after Biden—a career gun prohibitionist who recently insisted he is “a Second Amendment guy” because he owns two shotguns—headed the “task force” which was supposed to come up with solutions to gun-related violence.
Biden’s shotgun remark, reported by CNS News, brought heaps of sarcasm from grassroots activists, including one man in Florida who observed in a telephone conversation with this correspondent, “I own a guitar, but that doesn’t make me Jimi Hendrix.”
“It was Biden’s responsibility as Barack Obama’s ‘gun czar’ to prevent this sort of thing,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Now, more than ten years later, we’re learning that Joe Biden couldn’t even do that job right, and the taxpayers will ultimately be paying $144 million for this.”
Biden headed the gun control task force early in Obama’s second term.
According to a Wikipedia history of the rampage at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., Kelley bought two guns in 2012, and later, he was able to buy four other guns, including the semi-auto Ruger rifle with which he killed more than two dozen people in the church in November 2017.
“Although the crime occurred after Obama and Biden left office,” Gottlieb noted, “they (Biden and Obama) have to own this tragedy because the Kelley case, the Air Force foul-up and the subsequent gun purchases all happened on their watch.”
Kelley was confronted as he left the church by a neighbor, Stephen Willeford, who shot at him with an AR-15 rifle. Kelley was hit twice and he fled with Willeford and another man in hot pursuit while contacting police to let them know where the killer was headed.
Eventually, Kelley lost control of his vehicle and swerving off the highway, into a field. It was there he took his own life.
Willeford was hailed as a hero for his intervention. He was a firearms instructor and the fact that he opened fire on the killer with a rifle Biden wants to ban has not been lost on millions of gun owners and Second Amendment activists.
In recent days following the school shooting in Nashville, Biden has attempted to bring public pressure on Congress to push his gun control agenda. Gottlieb is having none of it.
“The blood in Texas is on the hands of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, just as sure as the settlement will be at the expense of the taxpayers,” Gottlieb said. “Now we’re supposed to admonish Congress for not moving ahead on Biden’s gun prohibition agenda. We’re tired of paying the price for his failures, and we should not be expected to sacrifice our rights just so he can claim some make-believe victory against crime.”
Gottlieb is cutting Biden no slack.
“Americans are suffering from Biden’s incompetence as president,” the veteran gun rights advocate said, “and gun owners have become whipping boys because the Texas killer was repeatedly able to slip through the system like the president slips up repeatedly during speeches, and even while climbing the steps to Air Force One.”
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Even if his record had been updated and he was denied at an FFL, the scum would likely have still carried out the shooting, easily stealing a gun or buying one on the black market, or using another type of weapon. Background checks don’t stop shootings: 96% of criminals don’t get guns through FFL’s. Per the DOJ. America did just fine before background checks, when you could order a rifle by mail through catalogs.
John Noveske’s Link to Drugs and School Shootings – Trebuchet (trebuchet-magazine.com)
A countless studies and articles on Mass Shooting and fatherlessness/no father figure of the shooter/killer. But the Left Failed Democrats hide this truth.
“America did just fine before background checks, when you could order a rifle by mail through catalogs.”
This was also a time when you could lock up the insane people instead of stuffing them full of Prozac and turning them loose on the public!
It was great. I remember filling out the bubble sheet at Service Merchandise and paying. Then standing at the long conveyor belt as the old women took their new ironing boards, mixing bowels, hair dryer, etc off the Conveyor Belt. My rifle and boxes of ammunition would come down the Conveyor and I would simply take it and leave.
The others didn’t care what you bought, they weren’t tricked by the Sneaky Democrat Hate for the 2nd. Amendment.
“This was also a time when you could lock up the insane people instead of stuffing them full of Prozac and turning them loose on the public!” Agreed. And there wasn’t 24-7 coverage of the latest tragedy nor the targeted relentless anti-gun ownership agitation that we see today.
True enough, all that. BUT.. since Dopey Joey the Nutjob “president” we have is pushing hard for “more background checks” s a solution to a different problem, throwing this sort of PROOF the NICS system does not work as planned helps OUR side. wWe all suffer under the tyranny of these stupid worse than useless rules and hoops on the false premise that “they will fix the problem”. They don’t and cannot fix the problem, because the tool will never fix the corrupt human heart. Anyone truly wanting to kill can and will figure out a way. I’ve always throught… Read more »
Please, tell us how easy it is to buy a gun on the street. Do you go into the hood and say, “Oh hi there Mr. Gangbanger, would you please sell me a gun?”
It’s perfectly legal in PA to buy privately. And I imagine many other States. So no need for the hood. Or buy from Mr Gangbanger. lol
You didn’t think this through, did you?
Joe Biden = “gun czar” = communist . Prosecute Joe Biden, Barrack Obama and Eric Holder for fast and furious or STFU and leave lawbiding Americans alone .
To Biden and all other seemingly mentally retarded ilk, “Keep poking the Bear!”
What do you mean? Can you more fully elaborate or just hint? Is it like “reaping what one sows”?
Jurist, poke a bear that wants to be free to find out what it means.
No less than the Kenyan himself proclaimed…”Never underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to Fu’k thing up!
God only knows just how much BLOOD is on the hands of Joe Biden and Barack Obama. It must be staggering in just abortions alone.
Surely up there near the numbers of Pol Pot. Joe Biden’s Illegal Immigration Trade alone and the death and destruction from his Illegal Immigrants that raped and beheaded the rape victims afterwards all the way to the countless Fentanyl Deaths some say is near 300,000 now. The 50 year impact of Joe’s ruthlessness directed toward the American People would take much time to research and tally up.
Whether you care about them or not, tens, maybe hundreds of thousands will die in Afghanistan and worldwide as a consequence of the way he pulled out. The Taliban are merciless plus the arms and armaments left behind are enough to equip a mid-sized army.
Without doubt, talk about that all the time. The death Biden caused will continue and the Left Media continues to hide it and cover for Biden. 83 Billion Dollars in military equipment, guns, jets, helicopter, trucks, vans, jeeps, cars, night vision, etc. all to the Taliban and China. The biggest killer and criminal in America and he is protected like a Teflon Don. The latest is Biden is blaming Trump again for his failed pull-out.
Biden is a supporter of the 2nd amendment because he owns two shotguns?
Well then, I would have to support the red flag law that takes his shotguns away from him until he can pass a mental evaluation. If he can’t, then that should make him unable to be POTUS…..LOL