imported post
Found a follow up story apparently he was able to purchase firearms and had Taurus and Ruger 9mms at the time of the shooting. So maybe not a failure of gun control, just a failure to recognize the need to treat a dangerous and mentally unstable man.
http://wtpotus.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/john-patrick-bedell/
In June 2006, police in Irvine (Orange County) arrested Bedell for growing 16 marijuana plants on his apartment balcony. “The cops had to carry him down three flights of stairs,” Irvine police Lt. Henry Boggs said Friday.
Bedell was convicted of misdemeanor resisting arrest, put in a drug court program and told not to have firearms, a restriction that was lifted last year.
The Orange County marijuana case wasn’t Bedell’s only run-in with the law. In August 2007, he was arrested for brandishing a 6-foot-long martial arts stick at a man in Mountain View when he was told he couldn’t play soccer, police said.
“The suspect swung the stick at the victim and said, ‘Do you want to keep your original teeth?’ ” Steve McCoy, a Mountain View police spokesman, said Friday.
Bedell was given 20 days doing work in lieu of jail after pleading guilty to disturbing the peace.
Bedell’s mental problems, however, were apparent to law enforcement. In 2003, a San Benito County sheriff’s deputy spotted him disoriented late at night, wandering in the middle of a street in Hollister, Sheriff Curtis Hill said Friday. He was taken to his parents’ home.
On Jan. 3 of this year, the Texas Highway Patrol stopped Bedell near Amarillo for speeding. A patrolman said Bedell was behaving strangely, but he let him go with a warning after calling Bedell’s mother, Hill said.
Bedell’s family learned that he had returned to California when they discovered he had made a $600 purchase at a gun range near Sacramento on Jan. 10, Hill said. It is unknown what he bought, but the sheriff said Bedell’s parents had told authorities they were “concerned.”
Under federal law [Should read California law], Bedell would have had to wait 15 days after buying a gun to take possession. He did not have a felony conviction and had not been involuntarily committed to a mental institution, so he was eligible to purchase a firearm.