CHARLESTON, S.C. -- A federal judge has dismissed 16 lawsuits by survivors in the 2015 Charleston church massacre but also said bureaucratic "nonsense" caused the gun background-check system to fail, allowing Dylann Roof to get a gun to carry out the killings.

In his 22-page order, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel called the FBI's background-check system "disturbingly superficial" and "obstructed by policies that deny the overworked and overburdened examiners access to the most comprehensive law enforcement federal database."

Gergel wrote that Roof would not "have obtained approval to purchase the murder weapon if the examiner could have accessed" the most comprehensive law enforcement crime database, called National Data Exchange, or N-DEx.

The government's argument -- that it has to deny its employees who make background checks access to N-DEx -- is "simple nonsense," Gergel wrote.

In his order, Gergel said FBI Director Christopher Wray "has full authority to allow ... examiners to access N-DEx. He could do this today."

Under federal law, people can't buy firearms if they have been charged with felony drug violations.

Roof, then 20, had been arrested by the Columbia Police Department at the Columbiana mall on Feb. 28, 2015, on felony drug possession.

Although the Columbiana Mall is within the city limits of Columbia, it is surrounded by Lexington County. The Columbia Police Department makes arrests in the mall, but the 11th Circuit solicitor's office, which has jurisdiction over Lexington County, prosecutes cases made from those arrests.

Because of the different jurisdictions, the federal employee doing the background check could not find records of Roof's drug arrest.

As a result, on April 22, 2015, Roof, who had turned 21, was able to buy a Glock Model 41 pistol from Shooter's Choice in West Columbia.

The FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, one of several databases used on gun background checks, failed to uncover Roof's drug arrest, which would have disqualified him from buying the Glock.

Two months later, on June 17, 2015, Roof entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, using his new pistol to kill nine people at a Bible study meeting.

Sixteen survivors subsequently sued the federal government, saying it had been negligent in failing to detect Roof's felony arrest during the background check.

A Section on 06/20/2018