LAFAYETTE, La. — John Russell Houser was deeply troubled long before he shot 11 people in a movie theater in Louisiana, but decades of mental problems didn’t keep him from buying the handgun he used.
Despite public signs of mental illness — most importantly, a Georgia judge’s order committing him to mental health treatment against his will as a danger to himself and others in 2008 — Houser was able to walk into an Alabama pawn shop six years later and buy a .40-caliber handgun.
It was the same weapon Houser used to kill two people and wound nine others before killing himself at a Thursday showing of “Trainwreck.”
Court records strongly suggest Houser should have been reported to the state and federal databases used to keep people with serious mental illnesses from buying firearms.
“It sure does seem like something failed,” said Judge Susan Tate, who presides over a probate court in Athens, Ga., and has studied issues relating to weapons and the mentally ill. “I have no idea how he was able to get a firearm.”
Houser never should have been able to buy a gun, said Sheriff Heath Taylor in Russell County, Ala. His office denied Houser a concealed weapons permit in 2006 based on arson and domestic violence allegations, even though the victims declined to pursue charges.
Federal law does generally prohibit the purchase or possession of a firearm by anyone who has ever been involuntarily committed for mental health treatment, which is what happened to Houser in 2008.
