Nashville police chief John Drake held a press conference Tuesday, during which he said the parents of the Nashville Christian school shooter told police their child had been in a “doctor’s care for an emotional disorder.”

National Review reports the parents reportedly told police that they believed their daughter should not own guns and did not believe that she had any; they believed their child had purchased one gun and then sold it. The shooter reportedly told her parents that she had sold the firearm.

The 28-year-old shooter was born a woman but identified as a male, using male pronouns. while the police chief did not divulge information on the emotional disorder, which doctor was providing the shooter care, or whether the shooter was on any medication. The media is reporting the shooter legally obtained the weapons, but “there is mounting evidence that she should not have been able to purchase those guns legally” adds National Review.

The shooter should have been legally ruled a potential threat to herself or others. Drake said his department would’ve tried to take the shooter’s guns away if officers had caught wind of her intentions, but, “As it stands, we had absolutely no idea who this person was.”

Under federal law, it is illegal for “any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person, including as a juvenile” who has “been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution at 16 years of age or older.”

“Mental defective” is a term you don’t hear often anymore, and some may find it offensive, but under federal law, it has a specific meaning: a finding by any court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person “is a danger to himself or to others; or lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs,” as a result of “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease.”

National Review adds that under Tennessee law, anyone who has been deemed “mental defective” cannot purchase a firearm in the first place. Only applicants who have not been:

“judicially committed to or hospitalized in a mental institution . . . has not had a court appoint a conservator for the applicant by reason of a mental defect, has not been judicially determined to be disabled by reason of mental illness, developmental disability or other mental incapacity, and has not, within seven years from the date of application, been found by a court to pose an immediate substantial likelihood of serious harm” may be granted a handgun-carry permit.

Tennessee law also requires all relevant information in the adjudication of a mental defective to be turned over to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

National Review concludes:

The Nashville shooter was, indisputably, a danger to others, and that threat to others was almost certainly connected to her mental illness. The evidence was there for her to be declared legally mentally defective and barred from owning firearms. The shooter’s parents believed she should not be allowed to own a firearm, indicating the shooter had said or done things that made her parents believe she was a potential threat to herself or others. But no one acted upon those concerns, and no one reached out to police.