We need common sense baseball bat laws

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Man accused in Aurora mass shooting had been convicted for beating girlfriend with baseball bat

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AURORA, Ill. — A disgruntled employee, who fatally shot five people and wounded five officers at an Illinois warehouse Friday, severely beat a woman years ago in a domestic violence incident that turned him into a felon — and should have kept him from buying a gun.

Two decades before police said Gary Martin, 45, opened fire at his co-workers, he was convicted of aggravated assault in Mississippi. Authorities there said he regularly abused a former girlfriend, at one point, hitting her with a baseball bat and stabbing her with a knife.

“All I can remember is him hitting and kicking me, I can remember fighting and screaming for help. I remember him pushing my head into that brick wall outside the apartment and thinking that he was going to kill me,” the woman told police in Mississippi in 1994, according to court records.

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