A restraining order that should have prevented the father of Jaylen Fryberg from purchasing the handgun his son used to kill four schoolmates and himself at a Washington State high school apparently was never entered into a federal criminal background database, reports the Seattle Times. A federal lawsuit filed this week in Seattle alleges Raymond Lee Fryberg Jr. was the subject of a permanent Tulalip Tribal Court domestic-violence restraining order when he purchased the .40-caliber Beretta handgun in 2013 from a sporting-goods store on the reservation.
Jaylen Fryberg, 15, used that handgun on Oct. 24, 2014, to shoot five classmates seated at a cafeteria table before turning the gun on himself. Only one teen survived. The elder Fryberg has been charged with illegal possession of the gun. Tribal spokeswoman Francesca Hillery said it was her understanding that there was “no protocol at the time for ensuring that information was passed on to the national databases.” Alan Gottlieb, a pro-gun author and president of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, seized on Fryberg's arrest to claim the state's efforts to enforce universal background checks for all firearms sales, driven by the passage of Initiative 594, are not foolproof.