Jacksonville shooter legally armed himself in state with one of USA's toughest gun laws

Marco della Cava | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption David Katz: What we know about Jacksonville shooting suspect 24-year-old David Katz is accused of going on a shooting rampage during a video game tournament before taking his own life.

When David Katz gunned down two fellow video game enthusiasts Sunday in Jacksonville, Florida, the question followed: Was this the random act of an enraged gamer bent on revenge or an unstable person who should not have had access to a gun?

In hindsight, the latter seems logical, particularly in light of court documents from his parents’ bitter divorce that suggest Katz’s psychological troubles started more than a decade ago.

But in legal terms, Katz, 24, who killed himself at the scene after injuring several others, lawfully obtained his two handguns in Maryland, a state that is among a dozen with comparatively high hurdles to firearm ownership.

According to a ranking of states based on the toughness of their gun laws, Maryland rates an A-minus, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Violence, placing it just behind California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York.

Specifically, Maryland goes a few steps beyond federal laws – which prevent the sale of weapons to those “adjudicated as a mental defective" – and restricts sales to anyone with a history of violent behavior or those who voluntarily have spent more than 30 days in a mental health facility.

Applicants must submit to fingerprint-based background checks and take firearms training courses.

Even though Katz had, according to a summary of online court records reviewed by USA TODAY, been sent for a short spell as a teen to Maryland’s Sheppard Pratt Health System and spent a few months at Utah’s RedCliff Ascent Wilderness Treatment Program, none of that would have disqualified him from gun ownership.

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"We set a high bar for removing someone's gun in the U.S., and getting mental health treatment doesn't meet that bar," said Susan Sorenson, professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on gun violence prevention.

"People get disappointed and angry, and often that results in a tragedy," she said. "But those reactions aren't unique to people with disorders, they're unique to being human."

Investigators in Florida are trying to piece together Katz's final days to try to determine a motive for his attack, which left Elijah Clayton, 22, of California, and Taylor Robertson, 28, of West Virginia, dead.

Diving into the details of Katz's past behavior may offer clues, said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

“The best predictor of future violence is prior violence," he said. "Being treated for a mental health condition is a poor predictor for future acts of violence. The vast majority of people being treated for mental illness aren’t a threat.”

From a public policy standpoint, Webster said, restricting access to goods or services based on treatment for mental health risks stigmatizing those who seek help.

In the case of Katz, “if we rolled back the clock and you showed me his background, would I say he’d commit a mass shooting?” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

Katz was not without deep troubles. He was at the center of a divorce between his father, Richard, a NASA engineer, and his mother, Elizabeth, who worked for the Food and Drug Administration.

Divorce proceedings frequently cited Katz’s psychological volatility. He would, said Howard County Circuit Court Judge Lenore Gelfman, go “days without bathing,” play video games until dawn and was “extremely hostile” toward his mother, according to court transcripts cited by The Baltimore Sun.

Katz took an anti-psychotic drug used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, according to court records. Despite his problems, Katz graduated high school in 2011, and a few years later, he enrolled at the University of Maryland.

Though his studies were not exceptional, Katz developed a reputation as a winning video gamer, which included a Buffalo Bills Madden championship in 2017. It was at another Madden contest in Jacksonville last weekend that Katz returned to compete but instead became unhinged.

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Gun policy experts agreed Katz did not fall through any cracks in Maryland’s system, emphasizing that only previous acts of violence or extreme threats of violence would have provided a warning of things to come.

Some states provide families and law enforcement with concerns about certain people to flag past incidents and, when necessary, revoke gun ownership.

Called the Extreme Risk and Protection Order, which is in effect in eight states, including California, Oregon and Washington, the measure allows applicants to petition the court for temporary removal of weapons from anyone who displays warning signs of violent behavior.

"If Maryland allowed law enforcement discretion when issuing handgun licenses, they might have been able to prevent this individual from buying a handgun based on his psychiatric record if they believed that he would not be someone who would use a gun safely," said Allison Anderman, managing attorney for the Giffords Law Center.

Anderman cautioned that although mass shootings have been carried out by people with mental illness – including Sandy Hook Elementary School killer Adam Lanza and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School suspect Nikolas Cruz – that remains the exception, not the rule.

“Most mentally ill people are not only not violent or a threat, but they’re statistically more likely to be victims of violent crime,” she said.

Gun control remains deeply contentious in the USA, especially after mass killings such as the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 died in 2016, and the Las Vegas concert massacre, where 58 were killed in 2017.

After the shooting in Jacksonville, National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch tweeted that the incident highlights the need to revisit "gun-free zones," which prevented patrons, such as the ones at the Jacksonville Landing, from bringing guns to the premises.

Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived a shooting while on the campaign trail in 2011 and runs the gun prevention organization named after her, posted on the law center's website that the nation should not "accept these horrific acts of violence as routine. Congress knows steps they can take to stop this madness."

Though gun control certainly will be in the spotlight as voters head to the polls in November, it remains to be seen whether this latest tragedy will fit the narrative on either side of the debate.

Katz was an adult who legally applied for and received a firearms permit in a state that takes gun access seriously. His mental health troubles appeared to have been largely in the past, and there were no signs of violence in recent years.

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Probably none of today's gun control measures would have kept a firearm from Katz.

Gun policy expert Webster suggested that going after people with mental health challenges risks missing far more at-risk gun permit applicants.

"Sure, objectively, individuals with some sort of mental illness are probably better off if they don't have guns," he said. "But the bigger issue is we're still allowing too many people with histories of violence to purchase handguns and legally carry them around, things like domestic abuse. That's incredibly dangerous and not justifiable."