COLUMBUS, Ga. — The man who killed two women at a Louisiana movie theater last week was able to buy a firearm legally — despite a judge’s order sending him to a psychiatric hospital in 2008 — because he was never involuntarily committed for treatment, Georgia officials said Monday.
An involuntary commitment would have banned John Russell Houser from buying a firearm under the federal gun law that strengthened state reporting requirements after a mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007. But Houser never reached the crucial stage of having a judge rule on his mental competence, a process called adjudication, which is required before someone can be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility, officials said.
“If he had been adjudicated in need of involuntary treatment, I would have reported that to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who would then send it to the FBI,” said Muscogee County Probate Judge Marc E. D’Antonio, who was chief clerk at the time in the county that would have handled the case. “I clearly would have known. That did not happen.”
