Ah okay, that's good. If we can blame the FBI we can pretend there's no need to take action on guns!
Did I say that?
There are already plenty of laws out there that are not being enforced/properly implemented.
After every tragic event like this there is inevitably a call for 'more gun control'.
Some of the failures that have led to these tragedies have been because people/agencies either failed to do their jobs or simply ignored their responsbilitiies.
The Sutherland Springs church shooter was a convicted felon that never should have been able to pass a background check and legally purchase a firearm. But the US Air Force failed to report the shooter's military court felony conviction to the database that makes up the NICS background check system.
The same sort of snafu led to the Charleston Church shooter being able to legally purchase a gun:
According to FBI Director James Comey, a police report detailing Roof's admission to a narcotics offense should have prevented him from purchasing the weapon used in the shooting, but an administrative error within the National Instant Criminal Background Check System kept Roof's admission (though not the arrest itself) from appearing on his mandatory background check.[58][59]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting#Perpetrator
People with mental health issues are supposed to be disqualified from being able to legally purchase a firearm. The NICS background check system is supposed to check for this. But there is a problem with the database used to make these background checks:
The FBI's background-check system is missing millions of records of criminal convictions, mental illness diagnoses and other flags that would keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands, a gap that contributed to the shooting deaths of 26 people in a Texas church this week.
Experts who study the data say government agencies responsible for maintaining such records have long failed to forward them into federal databases used for gun background checks - systemic breakdowns that have lingered for decades as officials decided they were too costly and time-consuming to fix.
and
A federal database with the names of mentally ill people barred from buying guns still lacks millions of records it needs to be effective. A new report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns points to gaps in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
The problem is that 14 years after NICS was put in place, states still aren't submitting all the required mental health records.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...ck-system-missing-records-20171110-story.html
But the Mayors Against Illegal Guns report shows 21 other states have reported fewer than 100 records
https://www.npr.org/2012/08/16/158932528/states-arent-submitting-records-to-gun-database
So 40% of states are not properly reporting their information related to mental health, criminal convictions, etc to the NICS database. garbage in=garbage out
Shouldn't this be a cause for concern?
You can try to expand the background search process but if the data that is supposed to make it up is incomplete then expanded background checks are going to be no more effective than the existing process.
Law enforcement was called out to the shooter's home 39 times over a 7 year period.
https://nypost.com/2018/02/16/deputies-called-to-suspected-shooters-home-39-times-over-seven-years/
Shouldn't that have been a warning indicator to someone?
The FBI failed to live up to its responsibilities in this instance.
The US Air Force failed to live up to its responsibilities in the Sutherlands Springs shooting.
The FBI failed to live up to its responsibilities in Charleston.
40% of US States are not properly reporting their data to the NICS database.
Perhaps more effort should be placed into fixing the current process, making sure that those responsible for the process are doing their jobs, before you decide to add another layer to the process.