Charleston Church Gunman Dylann Roof Bought Pistol Locally: Officials

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Law enforcement officials say the transaction was entirely legal, despite a pending drug charge.

June 23, 2015, 12:55 PM EDT / Updated June 23, 2015, 5:19 PM EDT

By Pete Williams and Mark Potter

Dylann Roof bought the semiautomatic handgun he used in last week's church shooting at a gun store 25 miles from his home, according to officials familiar with the sale.

Law enforcement officials say the transaction was entirely legal, despite a pending drug charge.

The officials say Roof bought a 45-caliber Glock handgun on April 11, eight days after he turned 21, at Shooter's Choice in West Columbia, South Carolina.

"We do not give out customer information," said a man who identified himself as the gun store manager but declined to reveal his name.

Roof's friends have told NBC News he used money given to him by his parents as a birthday present.

Roof had been arrested in late February at a Columbia shopping mall and charged with possessing Suboxone, a controlled substance commonly used to treat heroin addiction. He was indicted by a Lexington County grand jury on a state drug charge, a case that is currently pending.

Federal law prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone who is “under indictment for” a felony, but the drug charge Roof faces is a misdemeanor under South Carolina law. For that reason, according to several current and former law enforcement officials, the pending charge did not disqualify Roof from buying a gun.

A separate provision of federal law prohibits the sale of a gun to anyone who is “an unlawful user” of any controlled substance. A provision of the Code of Federal Regulations, which defines that term in the gun law, says habitual use can be inferred from evidence of recent use, examples of which, it says, include “a conviction for use or possession of a controlled substance within the past year,” or “multiple arrests for such offenses within the past 5 years.”

Image: Dylann Storm Roof — Dylann Storm Roof is seen in his booking photo after he was apprehended as the main suspect.Charleston County Sheriff's Office / Getty Images

Current and former ATF officials say a single misdemeanor arrest for possession of a controlled substance would not be disqualifying. The federal courts, these officials say, have tended to be strict in interpreting “unlawful user,” and as a consequence, this provision is not often enforced.

For all these reasons, law enforcement officials say, the sale of the gun to Dylann Roof was legal.

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Pete Williams

Pete Williams was a former NBC News correspondent based in Washington.

Mark Potter

Mark Potter is an NBC News correspondent based in Miami where he reports for NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt, TODAY, MSNBC and NBCNews.com. He joined NBC News as a staff correspondent in 2004.

During his more than 40-year journalism career, Potter has reported from all over the United States, South America, Central America and the Caribbean, including Haiti, Cuba and Mexico. He has also worked in NBC's London and Hong Kong Bureaus, and has reported from China, the South Pacific, the Philippines and Israel. Much of his career was spent with investigative units at both the national and regional levels, and he has reported on topics including politics, narcotics, immigrant smuggling, environmental issues, natural disasters, international conflicts and numerous high-profile court cases.

Among the stories he has covered are the Cuban Mariel boatlift, the Grenada invasion, the arrest and trial of Panama's General Manuel Noriega, the Mexican and Colombian drug wars, the Haitian immigration crisis, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Hezbollah-Israeli war, the 1980's Miami riots and cocaine crisis, the Theodore Bundy murder trial, the Oklahoma City and Atlanta Centennial Park bombing investigations, the regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Everglades Valujet crash, scores of hurricanes, the Armero volcano disaster in Colombia, the Central American conflicts, the Elian Gonzalez legal battle, several Papal trips, the right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo, the Gianni Versace murder, the U.S. heroin epidemic, the Southwest border-security debate, the U.S.-Cuban political opening and the dramatic prison-tunnel escape of Mexican kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

For 15 years, prior to working at NBC News, Potter was a correspondent for ABC News, reporting for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightline and Good Morning America. He also worked for CNN, where among other duties he served as contributing correspondent for the Emmy-Award winning magazine show, CNN and Time.

Potter is the recipient of the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Award, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, National Headliner Awards, the 2011 national Emmy Award for "Mexico: The War Next Door," a 2015 Emmy Award for "Hooked: America's Heroin Epidemic," numerous Emmy nominations, and six regional Emmy Awards. He also received a 2015 National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award.

Potter has often appeared as a guest lecturer in journalism classes at the University of Miami, the University of Missouri and the University of Kansas. His work is also featured in "Square Grouper," a 2011 documentary film about South Florida marijuana smugglers, and in “Cocaine Cowboys Reloaded,” a 2014 documentary about drug-related violence in Miami and Colombia.

Potter was graduated from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism and then worked for three local television stations in Evansville, Ind., and Miami before joining network news in 1983.

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