Academy sports chain can’t be sued for selling gun used in Texas’ deadliest mass shooting, state Supreme Court says – By Allyson Waller (Texas Tribune) / June 25 2021
The gunman should not have been able to purchase an assault style rifle, but the store conducted the required federal background check, which didn’t reveal his past assault conviction, the court said.
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The man who gunned down 26 people at a Sutherland Springs church in Texas’ deadliest ever mass shooting should not have been able to buy the assault style weapon he used, but the store that sold it to him can’t be sued because a federal database failed to flag his past assault conviction, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday.
In a unanimous ruling, the state’s highest civil court threw out multiple lawsuits against Academy Sports + Outdoors brought by survivors and families of victims of the 2017 mass shooting.
In four lawsuits, filed in Bexar County, victims and family members accused the retailer of negligence for selling a Model 8500 Ruger AR-556, fitted with a 30-round magazine, from its San Antonio store to Devin Kelley, 26, a former airman who served a year in confinement following an assault conviction in 2012. He was released from the U.S. Air Force in 2014 with a bad conduct discharge. Kelley lived in Comal County, about 50 miles outside of San Antonio.
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