Establish your screening criteria; income, criminal history, credit, etc. and stick to that.

mhmm i know i love my RED STATES lol i also remember taking a criminal justice course and spending half the semester on intent and long story short is if you have a book bag full of drugs and you can prove you did not know they were there you CAN BEAT THE CASE... never actually happened as far as i know but basically if you grabbed your roommates bag by accident and they came in took the charge and explained it but i don't know anyone who has a room mate that is that nice lol MY POINT IS WHO CARES... not legal advice but if you accepted 2 applications at an open house at the same time and they both say they think they want to move in but are not sure... than you get positive reports for both perspective tenants and they both email you at the same time saying yea they are 100% sure they want it and will have a deposit the next day....

These requirements might not deter a criminal or even an irresponsible person from having a gun, but it could give you additional leverage to terminate a lease or limit your liability if a problem occurred and you could show that the tenant was violating the lease.

Criminal RecordThose are real issues that are truly important.

In fact, cheap enough, be sure they're checking criminal, evictions, employment, landlords, credit, etc.

Criminal and civil charges will not help that.

Here is an excerpt from our rental criteria.LEGAL/CRIMINAL HISTORY1.          

I can see criminal cases and civil cases.

I focus on describing the actual property itself.However there are some numbers in the ad that will screen out some applicants, such as "One year lease only, first, last, and security deposit due upon lease signing" and "application includes criminal/credit/eviction history screening and employment/income verification". 

Frequently check your court websites to see if he gets any criminal charges.