Inconsistent military domestic violence policies allow troops with criminal histories to buy guns...

A 2017 mass shooting at a rural Texas church revealed troubling gaps in how the military responds to violent crime, and advocates say the Pentagon still isn't doing enough to keep people with criminal backgrounds from purchasing firearms.

The gunman in the Sutherland Springs, Texas church shooting — Devin Kelley — was a former member of the Air Force who had been court-martialed in 2012 for domestic violence against his wife and 11 month-old stepson.

But the military didn’t report his conviction to NICS, an FBI system that checks the records of people buying firearms. A federal judge ruled that if the service had done so, Kelley might not have been able to purchase the weapon he used in the church shooting.

The November 5, 2017 shooting killed 26 people, including an unborn child.

Congress later passed a law, the FIX NICS Act of 2018, to compel the Defense Department to improve its records submissions.

“They significantly stepped it up after the 2017 incident,” said Triana McNeil of the Government Accountability Office, which measured the Pentagon’s progress in 2020. “They know what they need to be reporting.”