By CAP Action War Room

In The Wake Of The Lafayette Shooting, A Look At Gun Violence In America

Yet another community is reeling from a senseless act of gun violence today. Last night, at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, a gunman opened fire, killing two people and injuring at least seven others, before turning the gun on himself. Three years ago this week, also on a Thursday, another gunman opened fire at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring 70 others.

Just hours before the shooting broke out, in an interview with BBC, President Obama said his biggest frustration so far as president is that “the United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient, common-sense gun safety laws — even in the face of repeated mass killings.” It’s true. America has unfortunately earned its sad title as the land of mass shootings. By one count, there have been 204 mass shootings and 204 days in 2015. Of 32 comparable OECD countries, the United States makes up 30 percent of the total population but 90 percent of all firearm homicides.

Louisiana, the home of yesterday’s tragedy, has some of the weakest gun laws in the country and the nation’s highest rate of gun murders—the state gun murder rate is 164 percent higher than the national rate. Data shows that weaker gun laws are correlated with higher rates of gun violence across the country. According to a 2013 report by the Center for American Progress, the 10 states with the weakest gun laws have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high as the states with the strongest gun laws.

While information about yesterday’s shooter, John Russell Hauser, is still evolving, early reports suggest that he, like the gunman in Charleston, may have been motivated by racial hatred. Further, other reports suggest that Hauser had a history of mental illness and spousal abuse, which may have prohibited him from lawfully possessing a gun.

Federal law prohibits people who’ve been involuntarily committed to a mental institution from purchasing or possessing gun – and, in this case, reports indicate that a court in Georgia did involuntarily commit Hauser to a facility in 2008. Unfortunately, Georgia is among a number of states have failed to supply all relevant mental health records to the FBI gun background check system. In fact, as of 2014, the state of Georgia had only submitted 8,263 mental health records to the FBI – for context, Michigan, which has a similar population to Georgia, had submitted more than 125,000 such records.

Additionally, federal law prohibits individuals subject to certain domestic violence protective orders and convicted of certain domestic violence misdemeanor crimes from possessing a firearm. Reports indicate that Hauser had a history of domestic abuse and that his wife got a protective order against him in Georgia. It is so far unclear whether Hauser’s history should have barred him under the current federal domestic violence protections. Notably, however, earlier this week new bipartisan legislation was introduced in Congress that would expand the scope of intimate partner violence that would make a person ineligible to possess guns. A new poll by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, also released this week, showed that 82% of Americans support this legislation to disarm intimate partner abusers.

BOTTOM LINE: Another community has been saddened by a tragic act of gun violence. There are common sense steps we must take to ensure that not one more has to.