WaPo: After his family died, he threatened to kill himself. So the police took his guns.

WaPo: After his family died, he threatened to kill himself. So the police took his guns. By Eli Saslow:

LISBON, Conn. — John McGuire was inside his house with 81 guns when five state troopers were dispatched to investigate a threat he had reportedly made. They drove past a series of frozen lakes and up an unplowed driveway to a house set back in the Connecticut woods. The shades were drawn. A tattered mattress wasted away on the front porch, and boxes of medical equipment cluttered the entryway.

McGuire, 76, came to the door wearing a stained sweatshirt and uncombed gray hair. He hadn’t dealt with police in the two decades since he retired from the force himself, but he still knew the legal statutes and understood his rights. He asked the police if he was under arrest, and the officers said he was not. He asked if he had broken any laws, and they said he hadn’t. They told him he wasn’t being charged, or investigated, or even accused of any crime. Instead, they had come to search his house this winter evening based on a controversial type of warrant, one that represents the United States’ latest piecemeal attempt to prevent gun violence.