Vice President Pence said Wednesday that the Air Force is “moving aggressively” to evaluate the mistakes that allowed the suspect in the Texas church shooting to purchase a firearm.
“We now know it was a crime that the assailant was ever able to purchase a firearm in the first place,” Pence said during a visit to Sutherland Springs, the Texas town where the mass shooting took place. “He lied on his application, had a history of mental illness and there were bureaucratic failures.”
The vice president said the Air Force will finish its review “in days, not weeks” and that the Department of Defense is also completing its own evaluation.
{mosads}The Air Force had previously failed to put information about suspect Devin Kelley’s 2012 court-martial for assaulting his wife and his infant stepson into a database used to screen individuals seeking to purchase firearms.
“We will find out why this information was not properly reported in 2012,” Pence added.
Pence’s comments come after 26 people were killed in a shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs on Sunday.
More than 100 employees of the FBI are investigating the shooting, Pence said, citing information he received from the attorney general.
The vice president promised the Texas community the “full measure of federal resources.”
“President Trump asked us to be here to say to the members of the First Baptist Church and to Sutherland Springs, we are with you,” Pence said in the speech. “The American people are with you. And as the president said on Sunday halfway across the world, we will never leave your side.”
Kelley was found dead with three gunshot wounds, including one believed to be self-inflicted, after he “wrecked out” fleeing the scene, a local sheriff said earlier this week.
The attack on the church, which came just over one month after the deadly mass shooting at an open-air concert in Las Vegas, has renewed calls for gun control legislation from Democratic lawmakers.