John R. Houser was dangerously mentally ill, too ill to carry a gun. Of that, there is little doubt.
Over 16 years, Mr. Houser, 59, had been charged with hiring a man to burn down a lawyer’s office and named in a domestic violence complaint. In 2008, after Mr. Houser threatened to kill his daughter’s fiancé, a judge issued a temporary restraining order and ordered him hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation. In 2014, he threatened to shoot law enforcement officers who were trying to evict him, then booby-trapped the house to start a natural gas fire.
His record was frightening enough that an Alabama sheriff refused to issue him a concealed weapons permit. But like most states, Alabama requires no permit to buy a firearm. His wife said she repeatedly threw his handguns into the Chattahoochee River, fearing that he would harm himself or others. Mr. Houser just bought more.
Holed up in a Motel 6 in July 2015, Mr. Houser wrote in a journal that Dylann Roof, the white man charged with gunning down nine black members of a historic Charleston, S.C., church the previous month, had the right idea, but the wrong targets.
“Thank you for the wake-up call, Dylann,” he wrote.
Later that month, Mr. Houser walked into a movie theater in Lafayette, La., carrying a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol that he had bought at a Phenix City, Ala., pawnshop the year before. Ten minutes into a showing of the comedy “Trainwreck,” he opened fire, killing two moviegoers and wounding nine more. Before the police arrived, Mr. Houser put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. . .
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Mayci Breaux, left, and Jillian Johnson were killed at the movie theater in Lafayette.
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