Texas Senator Seeks To Strengthen Gun Background Checks

AUSTIN, TX — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, plans to introduce a bill aimed at ensuring all federal agencies upload conviction records into a national crime database, a measure many believe would have prevented the mass shooter in Sutherland Springs, Texas, from buying firearms.

Devin Kelley, 26, was kicked out of the U.S. Air Force after a bad conduct charge, which should have banned him from purchasing or owning a weapon based on his conviction for domestic abuse accusing him of assaulting his wife and fracturing his son's skull. But Air Force officials have since acknowledged they failed to send the information to an FBI national crime database that would've yielded a red flag for gun merchants in selling weapons to him.

That misstep by the Air Force enabled Kelley to purchase four firearms from 2014 to this year, including the assault rifle that took the lives of 26 people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, during worship service last Sunday.

Cornyn's proposed legislation would compel federal agencies to send conviction records for posting on the Instant Criminal Background Check system.

As each new detail emerges from what is still an ongoing investigation, we need to study the whole puzzle, ask ourselves how did this happen, why so many lives were lost and what if anything could have been done to prevent it,” Cornyn said.

Calling for bipartisan support of the measure, Cornyn labeled the level of uploaded records as "staggeringly low." He called for wholesale corrections: "This is unacceptable, and it must change," he said from the Senate floor. “We need to better understand why our existing laws didn't work in this instance and that's what my proposed legislation will do.”

Last year, Cornyn co-sponsored a bill authorizing law enforcement agencies to utilize the federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant funds to pay for the active-shooter training, something that was not previously allowed.

Headway was made on that effort last month when the U.S. Department of Justice awarded a $5.4 million COPS grant to the Advanced Law Enforcement Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Integrated Response Training Program at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. The program provides active shooter response training to law enforcement officials and first responders nationwide.

Cornyn previously introduced a related bill, the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act, to encourage states and agencies to upload more mental health records into National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and to improve crisis response by law enforcement. Video of his remarks in introducing that bill can be found here.

As it happens, by sheer chronological coincidence, law enforcement officials are gathered in San Marcos this week in attending the Alert Active Shooter Conference — mere days after what is now known to be the worst mass shooting in state history in Sutherland Springs just 46.5 miles away.

>>> Photo of U.S. Sen. John Cornyn via State of Texas