But it's still not clear whether more research would have turned up information to disqualify Joseph Giachello from buying a gun.

Federal authorities never gave a final answer on whether Joseph Giachello, the Westerly man who killed a worker at his affordable housing complex before turning the gun on himself, was legally barred from buying the gun he used in the shooting, according to local and state law enforcement officials and the dealer who sold him the gun.

In response to a federal background check for Giachello’s gun purchase before the shooting at Babcock Village on Dec. 19, the FBI-run National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, told the gun dealer to delay the transaction. Authorities needed more information about something that may have disqualified Giachello.

But under federal law, after at least three working days have passed without an answer from the NICS, gun dealers are allowed to release the gun anyway.

That’s what happened in Giachello’s case, according to Westerly Police Chief Shawn Lacey and the owner and the manager of Hope Valley Bait & Tackle, where he bought the gun. (Giachello also had to wait out Rhode Island's seven-day waiting period.)

A spokeswoman for the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Service declined to comment, saying she could not speak about a specific transaction. But the service has done so in a similar case, which gave the lapse a name among gun-control advocates: the Charleston loophole.

It’s still not clear whether more extensive research by the federal government into Giachello’s background would have turned up information to disqualify him from buying a gun under state and federal law, like certain types of criminal convictions, evidence of drug abuse or being involuntarily committed by a court to a mental institution.

The FBI also won’t say what it was trying to review. The NICS staff check multiple databases, which have information on arrest warrants, criminal histories and other types of records, like mental-health records, that might bar someone from getting a gun under state and federal law. In follow-up investigations in cases of delays, examiners can ask for records from local courts and law enforcement.

Background checks can get held up because someone who has a name similar to a legitimate buyer’s has a criminal record. They can also be delayed because an older criminal record in the system needs to be more thoroughly researched to see if it rises to the level of disqualification. Federal law bars people with convictions for crimes punishable by longer than a year or misdemeanor domestic offenses from getting a gun.

According to the Westerly police chief, authorities still haven’t found anything in Giachello’s history that would have legally prohibited him from buying the gun. Some mental-health records are confidential in Rhode Island courts. The state court system said there’s no mechanism for challenging their confidentiality if they do exist, which the court system said it could not confirm or deny.

Giachello, 66, first applied for the .38-caliber revolver from Hope Valley Bait & Tackle, in Richmond, in November. He had to return in December because he failed the state’s handgun safety test, owners and law enforcement said. Both times, he passed the local background check done by the police in Richmond, and both times, the federal background check came back with a “delay” response, the dealer said.

When firearms dealers get a “delay” response, they’re also told the date when they can legally give the buyer the gun anyway, even if they have not received a response from the NICS.

Giachello picked up the gun Dec. 17, after passing the handgun safety test, after the state waiting period had passed, and after the delay period had passed, but before the NICS came back with a final response, the dealer said.

On Dec. 19, in an act that police say was clearly premeditated, he opened fire in the office area of Babcock Village, killing Julie Lynn Cardinal, 47, and wounding Donna Thornley, 66, and Robin Moss, 38.

Cardinal was the assistant property manager and Moss was the property manager at the complex, while Thornley was a fellow resident.

After the shootings, Giachello went back to his room on the third floor and turned the gun on himself. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, leaving behind a note apologizing for “the mess downstairs,” law enforcement officials said.

He had complained about not being able to do what he wanted in his unit; police said he’d gotten notices about smoking in the apartment.

The details of the gun transaction have brought to the forefront the complicated and often misunderstood process of buying guns in Rhode Island, as well as the intersection of mental health, violence and constitutional rights.

Giachello had been taken for mental-health treatment on an emergency basis at least twice in the early 2000s, once for threatening to buy a gun and kill his estranged wife, and when he turned an actual gun over to his counselor in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. But nothing in Giachello’s known history would have prevented him from getting a gun, Lacey said.

Federal law prohibits people who are committed to a mental institution from getting guns. But that has to be a formal commitment by a lawful authority; it doesn’t include visits for observation or voluntary visits. Though the law includes gray areas, experts and law enforcement officials in Rhode Island have said so-called emergency certifications are not enough, by themselves, to later prevent someone from getting a gun.

“Based on the information that has been released, it doesn’t appear that he would have been prohibited from buying a firearm in our state,” Dr. Megan Ranney, a Rhode Island Hospital emergency room doctor and co-chair of a gun safety task force, said after the 2002 emergency certification became public.

In Rhode Island, civil certifications, which require a decision from a judge, would prevent someone from getting a gun. Rhode Island has only reported those records to the NICS for a few years.

Craig Berke, a spokesman for the state judiciary, said the state could not confirm or deny whether Giachello had ever been petitioned for civil certification, because it’s a confidential process. But there are no records, like police reports, that describe Giachello going through that lengthier civil commitment process.

Other police reports suggest that the September 2002 threat to kill his wife, widely publicized after the Westerly shooting, did not result in a lengthy stay at Butler Hospital: Giachello was at a police department picking up a restraining order later that month. Civil certifications are effective for as long as six months.

Giachello’s ex-wife, whom The Journal is not naming because she’s a victim of domestic abuse, said their marriage was short-lived but mostly happy until financial difficulties arose and he lost his job. He stole from her, she said, and abused her verbally and emotionally.

One night in August 2002, he came home, drinking SunnyD and vodka. He smashed her camera, she previously said in court records. Then he went to the hospital, and she got the news that he’d threatened to buy a gun and kill her.

In the months that followed, “I can’t tell you how many times I slept on the floor, on the side of the bed away from the window,” she said.

Experts are quick to point out that having mental-health issues is not a good predictor of violence toward others; in fact, people with such issues are more likely to be victims, said Ranney, the Rhode Island Hospital doctor.

A prior history of domestic violence and alcohol misuse, though, are patterns that often emerge in the wake of gun violence, Ranney said.

And so it was chilling how Giachello’s ex-wife found out about what had happened and what Giachello had done: The police showed up at her house. They wanted to make sure he hadn’t paid her a visit before opening fire at Babcock Village.

“It was very surreal,” she said.

In Rhode Island, the background check to buy a firearm is actually two background checks, one federal and one local.

One goes to the police department where the purchase takes place. In this case, Richmond Police Chief Elwood Johnson said they found no records indicating Giachello was legally prohibited from getting a gun. They did not find reports about his earlier mental-health issues, in part because police departments aren’t all working with the same system. Richmond couldn’t simply bring up a report in Westerly or Charlestown.

And before the Babcock Village shooting, police in Richmond didn’t do a cross-agency check as part of their research for firearms background checks. Those checks would have revealed, in towns where the police are working with the same software, some sort of contact with the applicant, but it wouldn’t have revealed the specifics unless the police followed up, Johnson said.

Richmond police looked at other law-enforcement databases, including the state Bureau of Criminal Identification, the National Crime Information Center, and the Division of Motor Vehicles.

After the shooting, though, the police changed their procedures, and now they do those cross-agency checks for firearms applicants, but it’s still difficult to share information, Johnson said.

That has prompted calls to create a uniform system allowing police departments across the state to share their reports more easily, as well as to shift the background check from the department where the purchase is made to the department where the buyer lives, or both.

But even if they had found those reports, they probably wouldn’t have legally barred Giachello from buying the gun, said Lacey, the Westerly chief. But it might have prompted the department to at least have a conversation with a person they knew had made violent threats in the past.

Giachello also lied on the state application to buy the gun, saying he’d never been treated for mental illness — although there’s no like-for-like prohibition on purchasing a gun for people who’ve been treated for mental illness. Some gun dealers in the state say they’ll deny a gun transaction if someone answered yes to that question anyway, treating it as a de facto prohibition.

The other background check goes through the federal NICS. Based on the information that the buyer provides on a standard form, the dealer can call in to the NICS to see whether to proceed with the sale. The NICS will give them an answer: Proceed. Denied. Or delay.

The signal for Giachello’s purchase from the NICS was: Delay. In cases of delays, a NICS examiner needs to do extensive research on something that might prohibit someone from getting a gun, like a conviction for some crimes. The gun dealer is not obligated to turn over the gun, but is allowed to do so.

Hope Valley Bait & Tackle never got a response, owner Bill Hopkins said.

“I can only follow what they tell me to do,” he said.

Hopkins said the shop has never had a problem in 40 years.

“It’s awfully sad,” he said. “It shouldn’t happen to anybody. If he hadn’t gotten the gun, maybe it would have been a machete, maybe it would have been something else.”

Hopkins recalled Giachello, from his November visit to the gun shop, as a polite older man who walked with a limp, shook his hand and wished him a merry Christmas. He seemed like most other customers. And like some other customers, he didn’t bother consulting the informational packet for the state’s firearms safety “blue card” test. He failed it, Hopkins said.

Giachello applied again in December, Richmond police said. Again, local law enforcement said Hope Valley Bait & Tackle could proceed, and the NICS told them to delay. The NICS also gave the shop a date when they could legally release the gun to him, Hopkins said. Giachello got the gun sometime after that, Hopkins said.

The same situation arose in the shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The NICS came back with a "delay" response when the gunman went to buy a gun. The gun shop sold him the gun without getting a final determination from the NICS. The gunman, a white supremacist, used it to shoot and kill nine black congregants at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

In that case, federal officials were seeking more information about a recent drug arrest when the dealer turned over the gun. The NICS examiner never found the police report in the case, but it would have showed that the shooter admitted to being in possession of a controlled substance, which would have resulted in a denial of the transaction, the FBI reportedly said at the time.

In cases where the gun dealer hands over the gun after three days have passed, and federal officials eventually determine the person was actually disqualified from having a gun, it’s up to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to get it back.

James Comey, the head of the FBI at the time, said after the Charleston loophole first became public knowledge: “We are all sick this happened.” The statement and a detailed description of what authorities were looking for came a little under a month after the Charleston shooting.

The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday, a little over a month after the Westerly shooting.

Authorities on scene feared Robin Moss would not survive.

A property manager at Babcock Village, the Cranston resident and mother of four was critically injured by Giachello and his gun. She was taken by helicopter to Yale New Haven Hospital, and law enforcement officials braced for the worst.

Instead, Moss steadily recovered. She is now in rehabilitation, getting better every day, her husband Ron said.

They’re focused on her recovery, Ron Moss said, but when she’s better, they also plan to fight for gun control. They’re interested in attending the visit to Rhode Island next week by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who also narrowly survived a shooting.

“I think even if we have more stringent laws, that’s not going to prevent every mass shooting in the future,” Ron Moss said. “But if we can do everything possible, we’re saving some lives in the process.”