And lawyers would have sued if this was not permitted as his rights had been trampled.  This is the same in Canada, mental illness such as his will not prohibit the owning of a firearm. We are not permitted to take away any rights when a mentally ill person presents himself with such thoughts. We cannot even force schizophrenics to take their medication if we feel they may become violent, and there are examples of these types of deaths occurring where they are remanded to a psychiatric ward, are put on medication then are forced to be released as they are now sane.

The problem we should be debating is not the handguns (in Germany, machetes and knives have worked equally well), but what do we do with this type of mental illness. The police did all they could legally do, the hospital released him and the police had no legal right to keep the weapon.