“I had an anger problem,” said Mr. Poordavoud, who is no longer allowed to have guns because of his felony record. “I still have an anger problem.”

Violence against others is not the only concern.

Ryan Anthony, the talented but troubled Disney artist who had a history of alcoholism, had talked about suicide for years with relatives. His father, Michael Anthony, said his son once threatened to jump off a highway overpass; another time, he vowed to hang himself from a chandelier in his home. A few months before he filed his petition to restore his firearms rights, he had attempted suicide by swallowing some pills, said his brother Loren.

But Mr. Anthony was able to hide his troubled past when a court-appointed psychiatrist examined him for the restoration hearing in April 2002. He told Dr. Rose Pitt, according to court records, that he had simply been going through a difficult period after he lost his job and split up with his wife. He was normally not a drinker, he said, but began drinking heavily. Since his involuntary hospitalization in mid-2001, he had been sober and attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, Dr. Pitt wrote in her report.

“Does not own guns but wants to skeet shoot, and so wants to purchase guns,” Dr. Pitt wrote. “There does not appear to be any contraindication to his being able to get guns.”

His relatives were incredulous. Had they been called, they said, they would have told officials to deny his request.

“I would have said, ‘No, that doesn’t sound right,’ ” Loren Anthony said. “He didn’t like guns.”

Mr. Anthony had been staying with Steven and Sofia Shafit, family friends. They said he had been doing better but was still hurting.

About two weeks after he got his firearms rights restored, he borrowed $300 from Ms. Shafit, saying he wanted to take a girl on a date. Instead, he went out and bought a shotgun — investigators found the receipt by his body — and checked into a room at a Holiday Inn.

On the desk, he left a three-page suicide note, according to a report from the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. At some point, he lay down on the bed, placed the barrel of the shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.