A gun-purchasing loophole used by the Pensacola shooter was reportedly flagged by the FBI months ago

Pensacola Naval Base.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

The FBI issued a warning about a hunting license loophole months before it was used to obtain a gun by Mohammed Alshamrani, who killed three people at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Pensacola, Florida, last week, Yahoo News reports.

Per Yahoo, the agency sent around a report in May that warned business about the possibility of "extremists and other criminal actors" exploiting a federal exception allowing "non-immigrant visa holders" to legally purchase firearms via a hunting license or permit. The alert noted that terrorist organizations like the Islamic State "have encouraged" people to find workarounds in U.S. gun-purchasing laws "to conduct mass casualty shooting attacks in their home countries."

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is now reportedly "at a minimum" advocating for "improved vetting" of foreign nationals seeking to purchase firearms, though he remains a "strong proponent of the Second Amendment for United States citizens," a spokeswoman, Helen Aguirre Ferré said. Read more at Yahoo News.

Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.