Alexis attributed his mental-health issues to his assignment in cleaning up contaminated debris at the 9-11 Ground Zero site, but the Navy claims no such record of this work. A report in British paper Daily Mail notes Alexis was seen exiting a subway near the World Trade Center just as the twin towers were collapsing. The sight, it says, quoting Alexis' father-in-law, left him "traumatized." Indeed, the career of Alexis runs parallel to the 9-11 era, when thousands of servicemen were assigned to secret combat missions that do not appear on their military records.

Turns out the NRA’s logic is BS.  The facts are that from 1994, when the Brady Gun Safety Act went into effect, through 2010, background checks stopped 2,079,000 applications for firearms transfer through licensed firearm dealers.  In 2010 alone, about 73,000 applications were denied by the FBI and about 80,000 by state and local agencies.  47 percent of the FBI denials were because of felony convictions or because the applicant was a fugitive from justice; 31 percent of the state and local denials were to convicted or indicted felons.