MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The New York Police Department has sent investigators to Nevada to find out more about the 27-year-old man who killed four people and then himself in an office building on Park Avenue on Monday. They say he drove cross-country to New York over the weekend before the attack, and they're looking into whether mental illness played a role. NPR law enforcement correspondent Martin Kaste is covering this story. And Martin, police also say they found suicide notes referring to brain injuries that he believed he suffered while playing high school football. What else do we know?
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: Yes, when it comes to signs of mental illness, there have been some reports here that the police in Nevada had previous contact with him for reasons involving mental health. Police also have now said they found antipsychotic prescription medications in his apartment. And so there's some reason to believe that he was really struggling here.
KELLY: I mean, if they had previous contact with him for reasons involving mental health, how was he able to get a semiautomatic rifle - the one he used in New York?
KASTE: Well, the police have told us that he got the rifle directly from someone he knew in Nevada, but legally, getting the gun privately like this would not have avoided him getting a background check. In fact, Nevada law requires checks even for private transfers. And we also know that he bought a revolver in a store just last month. So it seems the background check process by itself did not seem to have been any kind of impediment to him.
KELLY: I'm thinking of red-flag laws. These are laws that are meant to remove guns from people who might harm themselves or others. Isn't the whole point that a red-flag law should maybe have stopped him?
KASTE: Well, Nevada is one of the 21 states that have red-flag laws. But the thing to remember about those laws is that most of the time, just because someone has suffered mental illness does not automatically disqualify them from owning a gun under those laws. Someone has to go to a judge to ask to approve an emergency protective order - usually a temporary one - taking away that person's guns. And if no one gets the courts involved, that's not going to happen.
KELLY: I know there's been discussion, though, of making that whole process more automatic - emergency restraining orders for someone suffering certain kinds of mental illness. Where does that discussion stand?
KASTE: This is really politically sensitive 'cause you're talking about restricting a constitutional right to own guns, and gun rights groups have long warned that red-flag laws might be used vindictively to take someone's gun rights away. So when these laws were written in the last 20 years or so in many of these states, there was sort of a sense here that they should leave that up to the courts. Some mental health experts say there's a worry that people might avoid getting psychiatric treatment out of fear of losing their guns if it's just automatic like that. So usually the system is left up to the police or close family to initiate.
KELLY: And just to be clear - did no one try to get a court, a judge involved in the case of this man in Nevada?
KASTE: Well, we can't prove a negative here, but we have not found any sign in court records in Las Vegas that that happened. With red-flag laws, there's a huge difference between some of the states on how often the police think to go to judges to get these orders. In New York and Florida, the courts approve thousands of these every year, but in Nevada, it's more like dozens. So it really comes down to whether the local police are aware of the state's red-flag law, how to use it and whether they're encouraged to make use of them.
KELLY: NPR's Martin Kaste, thank you.
KASTE: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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