WASHINGTON – New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco filed suit against the Department of Defense Tuesday for failing to report to the FBI the names of…
WASHINGTON – New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco filed suit against the Department of Defense Tuesday for failing to report to the FBI the names of service members convicted of crimes that would have barred them from buying guns.
The cities say the Pentagon has failed to report “significant numbers of disqualifying records” to the gun background check system and put the lives of innocent civilians at risk.
“This suit therefore seeks judicial intervention—i.e., intervention by an independent and apolitical branch of government, fully familiar with monitoring, and maintaining, compliance with the law,” the cities said in their lawsuit, filed in Virginia federal court.
The problems with the Defense Department’s reporting system were exposed this year in the Sutherland Springs, Texas church shooting.
The Air Force failed to report information on a domestic abuse conviction that would have blocked Devin Kelly from buying a gun used in the mass shooting that claimed 26 lives.
The failure to report military convictions has been documented since at least 1997 by the Pentagon’s inspector general, the suit alleges.
Despite decades of warnings, the noncompliance has persisted.
Across all service branches, 31 percent of convictions that would have disqualified someone from buying a gun were never reported to the FBI from January 2015 through December 2016, the suit says, citing inspector general findings.
The three cities are all led by Democrats, some of whom have advocated stricter gun controls.
The Defense Department said that it does not comment on pending litigation.
