After the Charleston Church shooting, FBI Director James Comey apologized for "lapses in the FBI’s background-check system", saying that "An error on our part is connected to this guy’s purchase of a gun". Dylann Roof's arrest and admission that he was in possession of Suboxone without a prescription a month prior to his purchasing a firearm would have disqualified him as a prohibited person under the Gun Control Act of 1968. An internal FBI report on Roof's background check cited gaps in the agency's databases and its policies for handling background checks, along with legal restrictions on how long it can maintain certain kinds of data, for the failure. On August 30, 2019, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the survivors and families of the deceased can sue the Federal government.