The red flags were flying all over the place.

“California shooting suspect was out on bail for stabbing neighbor,” said the headline in the New York Post a day after Kevin Janson Neal went on a murderous rampage in Northern California, killing five, wounding ten, then being shot dead by police.

“Alleged gunman in Northern California rampage had history of violence,” said USA Today.

“Shooter identified as 44-year-old man who had problems with neighbors,” was the Redding Record Searchlight’s headline.

Let’s review: crazy guy, history of wreaking violence on others, and multiple weapons at his disposal in a state with the toughest gun laws in the nation.

It doesn’t quite add up.

In the aftermath of America’s latest mass shooting, all sides in the country’s red-hot firearms debate will move into the next stage: name-calling, blame-gaming and staking our positions.

And while gun enthusiasts will take cover behind the Second Amendment, arguing that the Tehama County tragedy just shows that no laws can stop a maniac, gun-control proponents will argue that the shooting shows what a lousy job we do of enforcing our existing, if fragile, gun laws.

Some questions:

Was Neal truly a threat, ready to explode?

The AP reported that the gunman was out on bail for a charge of stabbing a neighbor, had been the object of complaints from neighbors who said he had been firing off hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and had been the subject of a domestic violence call the day before the attack.

Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston said the shooter was facing charges of assaulting one of the feuding neighbors in January and that she had a restraining order against him. And the Sacramento Bee reported that Neal had been accused twice this year of assaulting his neighbors.

With his violent history, why hadn’t anyone done anything to get this guy off the streets?

Johnston did not comment immediately on the shooter’s access to firearms, but he did tell the Sacramento Bee that one of the fatalities was a woman who lived near Neal and had been the victim of the assault in late January that ended with the suspect in jail. Johnston added that he “believed the suspect was slapped with a restraining order following the January arrest that would have prevented him from owning firearms for at least a period of time,” the Bee reported, “although he had no details on that.”

Neal’s neighbors, though, certainly are expecting some answers and soon. Cristal Caravez and her father live across a ravine from the roadway where the gunman and his first victims lived. She said they and others heard constant gunfire from the area of the gunman’s house, but couldn’t say for sure it was him firing.

“You could hear the yelling. He’d go off the hinges,” she told the AP. The shooting, “it would be during the day, during the night, I mean, it didn’t matter.”

Caravez and her father, who is president of the homeowners association, said neighbors would complain to the sheriff’s department, which referred the complaints back to the homeowners association. “The sheriff,” said Juan Caravez, “wouldn’t do anything about it.”

Did his family try to do anything?

The gunman’s sister, Sheridan Orr, said her brother had struggled with mental illness throughout his life and at times had a violent temper. She also said Neal had “no business” owning firearms. Orr said their mom, Anne, did try and help — by listening to her troubled son every time he’d call her back in North Carolina where he’d come from. “The phone calls were exhausting,” the News reported, “and often detailed his precarious welfare and the growing suspicion that his neighbors were running a methamphetamine lab.”

Orr, Neal’s older sister, said her brother “would get wound up and I think (our mother) spent a lot of time calming him down. He would be irrational, irate and uncontrollable, and scream and yell. It was difficult to manage him. I don’t know how she put up with it.”

The phone calls took a toll on their mother, “who always listened, often helplessly,” said the report. She was hopeful her son could find the help he desperately needed. “As he got older,” Orr said, “it got harder to know what was real and what was in his mind.”

Did the authorities do anything after his arrest in January?

Yes.

Neal, 43, was arrested Jan. 31 and booked into Tehama County Jail on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, according to police logs published in the Red Bluff Daily News, which is owned by the parent company of this newspaper. Documents reveal that Neal was due to stand trial Jan. 11, 2018, on charges of second-degree burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, two counts of false imprisonment by violence, discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, possession of an assault weapon and misdemeanor battery, according to the News.

Tehama County District Attorney Gregg Cohen told the News that Neal had a long-running dispute with his neighbors and during the January incident allegedly shot through a wooden fence at two female neighbors as they walked along the fence. Neal then jumped the fence, confronted the women, stabbed one and took a cellphone from the other, Cohen told the newspaper.

At the time of the shootings, Neal was out of jail on $300,000 bail and had been since shortly after the January incident. His trial was scheduled for January following a preliminary hearing set for Dec. 15. Neal sometimes used the last name Smith, Cohen told the News. The January incident was the first contact his office had had with Neal.

The assault weapon he apparently used was involved in a complaint against him earlier this year. So why wasn’t it taken away from him at the time?

According to a report in the Redding Record Searchlight, prosecutors alleged Neal attacked one woman and robbed another in the Jan. 31 incident, according to court documents. “A Tehama County judged signed a protective order against Neal for both women and a felony criminal trial against Neal was set to begin next year,” said the report, adding that Neal had held both women against their will using violence. Court records show he also fired a gun during the attack — possibly an AR-15 Bushmaster rifle. “The rifle was specifically called out as an illegal assault rifle in the criminal complaint against Neal, though it’s unknown whether the same weapon was used during Tuesday’s deadly shooting.” Neal is reported to have used some sort of assault-style weapon in the shooting; many types of assault weapons are illegal in California. Large ammunition magazines (holding 10 or more bullets) are also illegal in the state; one neighbor said Neal clearly had such magazines, judging from the number of bullets he was firing around his place in the weeks before his allegedly murderous rampage.

So what about that California law banning certain weapons from certain people who’ve had run-ins with authorities?

It’s called APPS for short, or the Armed and Prohibited Persons System, and it’s designed to allow California law-enforcement officials to automatically track firearm owners and proactively disarm convicted criminals, people with certain mental illnesses, and others deemed dangerous.

But as my colleague Robert Salonga and I wrote recently in this newspaper, APPS is far from a perfect remedy to get crazy people to give up their guns.

“The biggest challenge you have is a huge number of people who are not supposed to be in APPS,” said Craig DeLuz, spokesman for the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Calguns Foundation.

DeLuz and fellow advocates told us that a big problem with the system is that there’s no quick way to remove someone’s name from the system once their court-ordered weapon restriction ends.

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“There is no guarantee that when your time is up, your name is going to be removed,” DeLuz said. “A big part is simply keeping up with the system, and doing basic administration that could really make a difference.”

It’s not clear at this point in the investigation whether Neal’s name was even on the state’s APPS database, or whether authorities had previously taken guns away from him. But supporters of APPS like Richard Aborn say such programs need to be replicated in other states given the increased frequency of mass shootings in the United States. Aborn is president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City and an architect of the defunct federal assault weapons ban as well as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act that implemented routine federal background checks for gun purchasers.

Referring to the recent church shooting in Texas, Aborn said “what we saw on Sunday is what happens when a deranged individual has possession of lawful firearms. Every time (APPS) is enforced and guns are returned, we’re preventing a tragedy. Mass shootings are a form of domestic terror. We should equip citizens to prevent mass shootings as much as we can.”