James V. Grimaldi of The Washington Post reports:
An old policy memo from the Clinton administration paved the way for accused Arizona gunman Jared Loughner to buy his first firearm.
Put in place by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, the policy prohibited the military from reporting certain drug abusers to the FBI, which manages the national list of prohibited gun-buyers, federal officials said.
Loughner attempted to enlist in the Army in December 2008 but was rejected because he failed a drug-screening process, Army officials said. Within a year, Loughner bought a Harrington & Richardson shotgun from Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson.
In November, he went back to the same store and purchased a Glock 19 – the one he is accused of using in the Jan. 8 rampage that killed six and wounded 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D).
Federal law since 1968 has prohibited gun sales to anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. Licensed dealers have been required to check the backgrounds of gun-buyers since 1994. But the Reno policy told federal agencies not to report people who had voluntarily given drug tests for fear it would deter them from seeking treatment, federal officials said…
The Reno policy remained in place despite a 2007 law designed to improve the NICS [National Instant Criminal Background Check System]. That law ordered all federal agencies to forward to the FBI the names of those ineligible under federal law to buy a gun from a licensed dealer. The law states that the names are to be sent at least quarterly, “notwithstanding any other law.”
…If Loughner had been put on the prohibited list in 2008, he would have remained there for one year under the rules of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which enforces federal gun law. It will never be known if he would have tried to buy a second gun after being denied the first.
According to The New York Times:
One spring morning in 2006, a student showed up at Mountain View High School so intoxicated that he had to be taken to Northwest Hospital, five miles away. A sheriff’s deputy went to the hospital’s emergency room to question the inebriated 17-year-old student, whose eyes were red from crying.
According to a police report, the teenager explained that he had taken a bottle of vodka from his father’s liquor cabinet around 1:30 that morning and, for the next several hours, drank much of its contents. Why? Because I was upset that my father had yelled at me, said the student, Jared Loughner…
Several of Jared’s friends said he used marijuana, mushrooms and, especially, the hallucinogenic herb called Salvia divinorum. When smoked or chewed, the plant can cause brief but intense highs…
Not long after showing up intoxicated at school, Jared dropped out…Then, in September 2007, he and a friend were caught with drug paraphernalia in a white van…
After dropping out of high school, Jared Loughner had tried to straighten up, friends say. He shed his unkempt image, cut drugs from his life and indulged only in the occasional 24-ounce can of Miller High Life. He began wearing crisp clothes and got a job at Eddie Bauer…
He tried to enlist in the Army in 2008 but failed its drug test. He held a series of jobs, often briefly: Peter Piper Pizza, but not long enough to make it past the three-month probationary period, an executive said; the Mandarin Grill, where the owner recalled that after less than a month of employment, the teenager simply stopped showing up.
After leaving his job at Eddie Bauer, he became a volunteer at an animal-care center in Tucson. On his application, he came across as a normal and ambitious teenager, expressing interest in “community service, fun, reference and experience.” But within two months he was told not to come back until he could follow rules…
In September, Mr. Loughner filled out paperwork to have his record expunged on the 2007 drug paraphernalia charge. Although he did not need to bother — he completed a diversion program, so the charge was never actually on his record — Judge Jose Luis Castillo, who handled the case in Pima County Consolidated Justice Court, said after the shooting that, in retrospect, it definitely “crossed my mind” that Mr. Loughner was worried that the charge would prevent him from buying a weapon…
