Why wasn’t Elliot Rodgers not in a lockdown mental health ward? How can a young man seeing several therapists and other mental health specialist(s) buy weapons? How is it not possible that this person NOT be on any lists that make him ineligible to own or buy guns? His parents were trying to have him institutionalized for christ sake. Why wasn’t enough information given to the police, before his gun rampage throughout the city? All this happening in one of the most restrictive second amendment states in the nation. I want someone jailed for failing to stop this guy.
Those are great questions. The answer to the one is that there isn't currently a means of attaching state mental health records to the federal NICS. Some states report some things - actual involuntary commitment, for example - and not others, such as credible threats. The systematization of this is fairly controversial - see
this story in the NY Post. Gun rights advocates consider it abusable, but so do certain mental health professionals who feel it would place a chill on patient/doctor communications. States seem to be better at this than the feds where they do it at all. This was a big topic after the Virginia Tech shootings of 2007.