now, that matters because if he were dishon blorably discharged pete williams was trying to determine earlier this hour, that would have prevented him from purchasing a firearm. he would have been not able to purchase a gun legally in the united states because of the laws on the books in this country. so again, we re still trying to confirm the nature of his discharge but that he was at one point a member of the air force. we don t seem to know much about him beyond that, though. right. along with, you know, obviously all of his past, whether or not he has prior arrests or violence. people here are asking those
one county beyond the adjacent county. all very close together. and that he knew people in sutherland springs. whether it s a personal connection, we don t know. one other thing that s worth bringing up, we believed he served in the air force and was dishonorably discharged. we re waiting for final confirmation from the military about that. a little difficult to get on a sunday evening. but it s apparent that if it is the same david kelley, he was dishonorably discharged. that s interesting in and of itself but also because, under federal law, it s illegal to possess a gun if you ve been dishonorably discharged from the military. so one big question is where did he get the assault rifle that he used in this attack. just to clarify, if in fact we learn that he was dishonorably discharged from the military, that would be enough to tell the authorities that
10, 12 years ago background checks, everybody supported. i believe in the late 90s even the nra supported background checks. now if you d even talk about background check, people say you re trying to confiscate our guns. nothing could be further from the truth. my goal is to keep people who shouldn t have them from having guns, that the old nra slogan was, guns don t kill people. people kill people. if that s true, let s keep guns away from the people, whether it s in this case perhaps being dishonorably discharged from the service or a felony or domestic abuse, we couldn t even get a bill through last year that if you re on the terrorism no-fly list you couldn t buy a gun. i just think this is sort of commonsense and, again, it has nothing to do with compromising
harvey oswald. when you buy a gun, you have to answer on a gun form, have you ever renounced your citizenship. again, right from lee harvey oswald who traveled to moscow and put his citizen on there. a lot of the gun laws we know about today came directly from there and they ve been kind of rolled back in the last 30 years to kind of take a lot of those provisions away. and i remember you covering the navy yard shooting and even in that case, if the gun control act laws of 68 were in effect, he couldn t have even bought a gun in virginia because he was a resident of texas. so, you know, back then congress acted and made the changes that made it a little more difficult for the killers.
this guy lived two counties away. he came to this spot and to this particular church for a reason and authorities are going to find out what is that reason. the reason is his reason and it might not even make sense to us but he s got a reason. it could be he s choking on an empty grudge, it could be he s after an ex-wife or her children, he wants revenge or the church might have done him wrong or he s after a particular class of people, or it even could be random. we just don t have those answers. but he s a local texas guy. could easily get the gun. that doesn t mean he got it legally but he could easily get a gun down there. ken, you ve covered intelligence and department of justice and you re familiar with how this will all potentially unfold. what are the next steps as they try to track down whether this gun was obtained legally? it s actually more difficult