by After the murders in Sutherland Springs, Texas by the former airman, the only record you could find about his court martial was a two page summary The former airman was a prohibited person but the US Air Force neglected to forward the records on to the FBI’s NICS System. As I noted at the time, if he had been charged with this crime in a civilian court not only would his records have been sent to the FBI but it was highly likely that he’d still be in prison.
Thanks to the efforts of David Codrea and attorney Stephen Stamboulieh the Air Force was forced to release the entire 610 page court transcript. Codrea had made a request for it under the Freedom of Information Act but the Air Force and the Department of Justice refused to release it. He sued in US District Court for the District of Columbia with the aid of Stephen Stamboulieh. The suit was filed in January of this year and the Air Force has finally released a record of the trial proceedings.
As Codrea noted in an article about the release:
The refusal to comply with the FOIA, forcing the filing of a complaint to obtain requested documents, points to a desire to cover up a record that shows the Air Force knew his crimes rose to the level of required reporting. (An attached motion alleging “illegal pretrial confinement and punishment” is also something they probably weren’t eager to see come to light).
This was clearly a damaged, a violent, and of relevance, a guilty young man, and as we’ve seen in similar cases, the government knew about him. They nonetheless failed to report to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, allowing the killer to purchase firearms from a Federal Firearms Licensee without the system flagging him.
What this and similar reporting failures acting as catalysts for “Fix NICS” and other legislation fail to account for is that ultimately, being a “prohibited person” cannot stop anyone so inclined from obtaining a gun. If it could, we wouldn’t see regular headlines about “gun violence” from places like Chicago.
I would urge readers to go to Ammoland and read the whole article. Then they should start scanning the trial transcript. It makes for interesting reading.
As a refresher, David Codrea and the late Mike Vanderboegh were the citizen journalists who broke the story on the Obama Administration’s Operation Fast and Furious which allowed firearms to go to Mexican cartels and which resulted in the deaths of two Federal law enforcement officers and untold numbers of Mexican nationals.
