Tributes paid to the 26 people who died in the church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas on November 12, 2017. RICK WILKING (Portal)
The United States Department of Justice on Wednesday agreed to pay the families of the 26 victims of a 2017 shooting at a church in Texas $144.5 million to settle a negligence lawsuit. More than 75 survivors of the shooting, which also injured 22, had filed a civil suit against the federal government, accusing it of failing to prevent the perpetrator of the massacre from buying the weapon despite proven warning signs.
The agreement, which has yet to be approved by a court, could set a new precedent in a country where armed violence is endemic. Lax gun control laws in some states allow cases like that of the shooter who killed six people, three of them minors, at a Nashville school 10 days ago with guns she legally obtained.
The settlement announced this Wednesday by the judiciary aims to end a bitter legal battle between the administration and the survivors. “Today’s announcement ends the litigation and a painful chapter for the victims,” said Vanita Gupta, assistant attorney general. Compensation is one of the highest of its kind, above those previously authorized to settle lawsuits arising from the government’s inability or negligence in disclosing information that could have been used to prevent similar events.
The background of Devin Kelley, the attacker, should have been sufficient to trigger the alerts, and they did, but the chain of transmission between administrations failed. The 26-year-old ex-military man was convicted by a military court in 2012 of domestic violence against his wife and son. During his military service, Kelley was committed to a psychiatric hospital after threatening to kill his superiors. Federal law prohibits persons convicted of domestic violence from acquiring firearms, but military commanders did not turn over Kelley’s file to the federal police, which are responsible for reviewing criminal records. Verification is a mandatory requirement for purchasing weapons.
Armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, a combat weapon, Kelley stormed a church in the small town of Sutherland Springs, Texas, during mass on Sunday, November 5, 2017, and opened fire on the worshipers present. children included.
A federal court in 2021 found the government may be partially responsible for this massacre and ordered it to pay the plaintiffs $230 million. The Justice Department appealed the ruling, finding that it was not responsible for not updating the statewide firearms background check system. The appeal angered the families, their attorneys and gun control groups, who viewed the case as crucial evidence of the Joe Biden administration’s commitment to gun control.
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“The Sutherland Springs families are heroes,” said Jamal K. Alsaffar, senior attorney for the families. “You have gone through so much pain and loss in the most horrible way. But they still fought for justice and won two lawsuits against the federal government.”
Parkland to Charleston
It is not the first federal government compensation case for the victims of a shooting, but the most notable. Last year, Washington agreed to pay victims of the Parkland school shooting in southeast Florida $127.5 million in compensation to end 40 complaints accusing the FBI of killing Reports from two sources, alarmed at the time, that they had not followed up on the dangerousness of the perpetrator of the massacre, a cantankerous ex-student at the center. The Parkland massacre claimed 17 lives.
A year earlier, the Justice Department agreed to pay $88 million to the families of nine African Americans murdered by a white supremacist at a church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, as well as survivors of the drama, ending another similar claim.
President Joe Biden’s administration has repeatedly sought to ban the sale of assault rifles and regulate access to guns much more tightly, in contrast to the conservative Supreme Court, which last June enshrined the right to carry firearms on the street without the one must show them just cause. The verdict was a jug of cold water for advocates of greater control. Despite guidance from the Supreme Court and pressure from the powerful gun lobby, Biden’s attempts were reflected in the first bipartisan legislation in decades, an important step but modest compared to his claims.
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