The nation in brief

Killer in Florida got guns legally

BALTIMORE -- Even though the gunman in a rampage at a Florida video-game tournament had been hospitalized for mental illness, experts said he was able to legally purchase the two handguns he was carrying at the time of the attack.

David Katz had a 9mm handgun and .45-caliber handgun when he opened fire Sunday at a gaming bar inside a collection of restaurants and shops in Jacksonville. He killed two people and wounded 10 others before fatally shooting himself during the Madden NFL 19 tournament.

Experts say the gunman's history of mental illness apparently would not have stopped him from buying guns in Maryland, where buyers cannot pass a background check if they were either involuntarily committed for any period of time or voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric facility for at least 30 consecutive days.

Divorce filings in Maryland from Katz's parents say he was twice hospitalized as an adolescent in psychiatric facilities and was prescribed antipsychotic and antidepressant medications.

However, the divorce filings do not clearly indicate whether Katz was hospitalized voluntarily or involuntarily, and the two hospitalizations described in the documents were both shorter than 30 days.

"It appears that these disqualifications did not apply to David Katz," said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

There is no federal requirement for psychiatric hospitals or courts to report involuntary commitments to the FBI.

STD cases reached record high in '17

The U.S. saw a record number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases in 2017, marking the fourth-straight year of sharp increases in gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The trend is exacerbated by the fact that gonorrhea could soon become resistant to antibiotic treatment, the CDC said in a statement Tuesday. Prevention efforts also have stagnated, and people are using condoms less frequently, said one expert.

"We are sliding backward," Jonathan Mermin, director of the agency's center on sexually transmitted diseases, said.

Chlamydia is the most commonly reported sexual disease with almost 1.7 million cases in 2017, up from just over 1.4 million in 2013. Almost half of chlamydia cases were in girls and women ages 15 to 24.

Since 2013, syphilis cases have risen 76 percent to 30,644. Gonorrhea cases in men nearly doubled to 322,169 in 2017 compared with 2013, the CDC said. Among women, gonorrhea diagnoses rose almost 18 percent to 232,587.

Ex-officer guilty in teen's slaying

DALLAS -- A white ex-police officer was convicted of murder Tuesday in the shooting of an unarmed, 15-year-old black boy while firing into a car packed with teenagers in suburban Dallas, marking a rare guilty verdict in a police shooting case.

Roy Oliver said that he feared for his partner's life when he fired into the vehicle as it drove away from a large house party in Balch Springs. The gunfire killed Jordan Edwards, who was sitting in the front passenger seat.

Oliver and his partner were responding to a report of underage drinking at a house party when the shooting occurred in April 2017. Balch Springs police initially said the vehicle backed up toward officers "in an aggressive manner," but police later said that body-camera video showed the vehicle was moving forward as officers approached.

Not including Oliver, only five nonfederal police officers had been convicted of murder -- and four of those were overturned -- since 2005, according to data compiled by criminologist and Bowling Green State University professor Phil Stinson.

A Section on 08/29/2018

Upcoming Events