TABERG, NY - Don Hall was sitting in his living room watching TV with his girlfriend about 9:30 p.m. earlier this year when he was startled by flashing police car lights in his driveway.

Hall met the Oneida County sheriff's deputies in the driveway, worried that they were bringing bad news about a family member.

Instead, the deputies produced an official document demanding that Hall, a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran who is a retired pipefitter, turn over his guns to them on the spot. On the document Hall said he was described as "mentally defective."

When Hall told police he'd never had any mental issues, Hall said, deputies told him he must have done something that triggered the order under the New York state's SAFE Act.

The deputies left that night with six guns - two handguns and four long guns.

Hall, who lives in the Oneida County hamlet of Taberg, hired a lawyer and secured affidavits from local hospitals to prove he hadn't been recently treated. At one point, he was told he'd have to get some of his guns back from a gun shop.

Eventually, his lawyer convinced a judge that authorities had him confused with someone else who had sought care and that his weapons should never have been seized.

To this day, no one at a hospital or the state and local agencies involved in taking Hall's guns has admitted to Hall that a mistake was made, explained what happened or apologized. A county judge did acknowledge the mistake and helped him get his guns back.

Hall said the ordeal was frustrating.

Don W. Hall, of Taberg. NY, poses with his Remington 742 30-06, one of the guns taken by the Sheriff Department. Ellen M. Blalock | eblalock@syracuse.com

"I was guilty until I could prove myself innocent," Hall said. "They don't tell you why or what you supposedly did. It was just a bad screw-up."

Under what legal authority Hall's guns were confiscated is in disagreement.

Hall and his lawyer said they are convinced his guns were taken as a result of a report under the NY SAFE Act. The New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act was adopted in 2013 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newton, Conn.

The law includes, among other things, a provision for health providers to report patients that they believe are a risk to harm others or themselves.

The state Office of Mental Health, however, found Hall's case was reported through a system set up by the federal Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, said James Plastiras, a spokesman for the state mental health office. That law, adopted in 1993, is named after James Brady, who was shot by John Hinckley Jr. during an attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

The federal law includes a provision that requires a hospital or medical facility to report anyone who is involuntarily committed or has been ruled mentally defective by a court or similar legal body.

A hospital reported to the state Office of Mental Health that a person had been involuntarily admitted to a mental facility, Plastiras said. That information was passed onto the FBI for inclusion on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, he said.

Paloma Capanna, a Rochester-area civil rights lawyer who has handled SAFE Act cases, said "there is a tremendous amount of confusion" over whether someone is reported through the SAFE Act or under federal law.

The way weapons are seized under either law is similar in New York state.

Once the state Office of Mental Health is alerted through either law, the staff checks records held by the state Department of Criminal Justice Services to see if the person has any guns.

Any matches go to the state police to verify that the identity of the person matches the identity of the gun owner. Once confirmed, the state police takes the case to a local judge who issues an order to confiscate the person's weapons. Local police usually are dispatched to confiscate the weapons.

One thing the state and Hall and his lawyer agree on is the misidentification that lead to Hall's guns being seized appears to have started when Hall was confused with some other patient at risk.

The day after Hall's guns were seized in February, he called the gun licensing office in Oneida County. When he told them his guns were wrongly taken, he was told he could attend a hearing in a few weeks.

Instead, Hall called lawyer John Panzone, who advised him to get depositions from every local hospital stating he had not recently been treated. Panzone hoped the affidavits would prove Hall couldn't be the person initially reported to be at risk.

Hall said he and his girlfriend, Connie Heidenreich, spent the next day visiting three Utica-area hospitals to get the statements.

Hall said the only time he had been a patient at any of the hospitals was four years ago when he had a sleep apnea test at St. Elizabeth's Hospital.

At St. Elizabeth's, Hall said a clerk looked up his name and read him a Social Security number. He said it was slightly different than his. "She turned white as a ghost,'' Hall recalled.

Panzone believes another patient from Oneida County with Hall's name was treated at the hospital and flagged for a mental health issue. Somehow that man's Social Security number got mixed up with Hall's, thus creating the error, the lawyer said.

When police showed Hall the gun seizure order the night they came for his weapons, Hall remembers seeing a slightly different Social Security number from his own in one spot on the court order and a correct one in another spot.

St. Elizabeth Hospital in Utica has no knowledge of the misidentification error that Hall believes happened, according to Caitlin McCann, a spokeswoman for the Mohawk Valley Health System.

Armed with the information from the hospitals, Panzone wrote to Oneida County Judge Michael Dwyer who ruled Hall should have his firearms returned to him in April. At first, Hall was told he could only have his pistols and his long rifles were going to be turned over to a gun shop. But almost immediately, he got a call saying he could have all his firearms back.

Although it took Hall several months to get his guns back, he's happy to have the ordeal behind him.

Hall said he does believe what happened to him points out a legal flaw. People should have the right to know why they were flagged, he said.

How exactly this kind of mistake can happen remains unclear. Syracuse.com |The Post Standard contacted the county and state agencies involved and were told either they couldn't say what happened or they don't know. The State Police did not respond to several phone calls.

The Office of Mental Health is investigating how the mistake happened, and said it appears the hospital may have "reported inaccurate information," Plastiras said.

Capanna, who estimates 4 percent of the population are reported as unfit to have guns, is critical of both the federal and state systems that allow authorities to confiscate weapons.

The lawyer said there is rarely any investigation on anyone's part to be sure the complaint is valid, and there is no due process for the accused before the guns are seized.

Panzone, Hall's lawyer, said he's surprised no one caught the identity mistake along the way.

"I'm surprised it sailed through the way it did with a man who has a spotless record," the lawyer said. "To me, presumption of innocence is the foundation of our system, and this provision doesn't allow for that."