On Thursday, John Russell Houser shot 11 people, killing two, in a theater using a handgun he had legally purchased from a pawn shop.
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In the wake of the Lafayette, Louisiana, Grand Theater movie theater shooting, the media has made much ado about the President’s “prediction” that less gun control laws would lead to more shootings.
A week after the move theater shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, information has surfaced about Houser’s checkered past and the missed opportunities for authorities to treat him and stop his attempt to buy a weapon.
“His wife removed his guns and together, the family persuaded a judge to issue a protective order keeping him away once he left the hospital”, the AP reported. “If [the shooter] had been involuntarily committed here, if he had tried to buy that gun here, he wouldn’t have been allowed to do that”. But the federal system is only as good as the information states feed into it, and many states do a lackluster job.
Trump, who called himself a “big Second Amendment person”, said that people needed “protection against the bad ones who have the guns”. “I clearly would have known”.
Pollingreport.com published a release when it stated that 49% of US citizens favor stricter gun control laws while the samepercentage of Americans oppose it and 1% was unsure. It’s naive to think that a background check tied into a mental illness report would have prevented the Lafayette shooting. “When do we pay attention to this?” We need to make sure that background system is working.
To most people’s minds, this was a person who probably should not have had access to a weapon. (He has also pushed for cuts in the state funding of mental health facilities.). Professor Healy went into details by disclosing statistics on a state-level mortality rate and found out that the South sees more violence than the rest of the country.
“At that point, court officials should have reported Houser’s involuntary mental commitment to the Georgia database that feeds the FBI’s background check system, which provides for a delay of up to three days when records suggest a buyer may be ineligible”.
Some 4 years ago, Richard Florida, a prominent American economist, analyzed how deaths at the hands of gunmen depends on a state where the crime was committed. This hot-button issue could also affect veterans. There’s no reason that Lafayette, La., should be immune from this kind of mass shooting.
Fewer guns in our homes, enforced laws regarding gun acquisition, closed loopholes connected to straw purchases and education about the dangers associated with guns in our homes are better options than open carry. However, many GOP lawmakers have failed to take concrete legislative steps in this area.
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“Though that is not mandated in the law, that was obviously the intent of the law, to try and get to that backlog as well, but that takes a tremendous amount of resources”, said state Sen. In June, Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) vetoed a bipartisan mental health bill that would allow doctors in the state to hold mentally ill patients who pose a danger to themselves and others for an additional four hours.
