Five years on, Sutherland Springs shooting victims fight for government to admit liability

Ryland Ward knows he looks different from other kids, though it's hard for him to talk about why. When he moved to a new school in Lampasas, the small Central Texas town where he lives with his mother, the 10-year-old felt other children staring at him when he wore a T-shirt to class. Just below his sleeve, at the crook of his left elbow, a deep chunk of flesh is missing - as if a monster had taken a bite out of his arm. That monster was a high-velocity bullet, and the cavernous scar a lifelong physical reminder of the gunshot wounds the boy sustained when a man armed with an AR-15-style rifle opened fire inside the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in 2017. Twenty-six people were killed and 20 others were wounded in the attack, including Ryland, who was shot at least four times at close range. The bullets exploded through his left arm, stomach, pelvis and left leg, causing such destruction to his 5-year-old body that doctors still can't say for certain how many bullets hit him.

Like Ryland, many who were directly affected by the shooting continue to suffer physical and emotional pain years later. But their anguish has been exacerbated by a legal battle with the federal government over its failure to stop gunman Devin Kelley from purchasing his weapons - by forwarding information about his violent past that would have been caught in a background check. After survivors were forced to paint in excruciating detail the enduring toll of the massacre, a federal judge found the government liable. Yet the Department of Justice gave notice in June it planned to appeal, although more recently it has opened the possibility of a settlement. Its grounds for an appeal are not yet known, but in the trial it argued that background checks would not have stopped the bloodshed - a position that clashes with the Biden administration's strong support of background checks and tightened restrictions on access to weapons. Dozens of Sutherland Springs victims, including Ryland's mother, brought the suit against the United States Air Force in 2018 after the branch admitted it failed to report Kelley's history of violence, including a 2012 conviction for domestic assault to the FBI. That conviction, which led to his dismissal from the Air Force, should have prevented the former airman from being able to buy the guns he used in the attack, which ended with Kelley's suicide.