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3 ways the father of the Waffle House shooter could go to prison

Travis Reinking had his guns confiscated, but then his father gave them back.

Travis Reinking open fired on a Waffle House in Tennessee with weapons he was never supposed to have — and his father might be facing prison time as a result.

The Secret Service arrested Reinking in August 2017 for trying to sneak his way onto White House grounds and forced him to hand over his weapons, ammunition and Illinois Firearm Owners Identification card. One of those weapons was the AR-15 Reinking later used to kill four people at the Waffle House outside Nashville on Sunday.

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That’s because the Illinois police who confiscated the weapons handed them to his father, Jeffrey Reinking, who eventually gave the weapons back to his son. Now his father could be facing felony charges.

Read: "Patchwork" of U.S. laws allowed Waffle House shooter to keep his guns

“If you transfer weapons knowingly to a person that is prohibited, that could potentially be a violation of federal law," Marcus Watson, acting special agent in charge with the ATF in Tennessee, told the Tennessean.

There’s a provision under Illinois law that allows people who have their Firearm Owners Identification card (FOID) revoked to give their weapons to another person with a valid card, so long as they explain where the firearms ended up.

Travis Reinking (Metro Nashville Police Department via AP)

There’s nothing in the law requiring that the person holding the weapons must lock them up, or even live in a different house than the person whose FOID card was revoked, Illinois Police confirmed to VICE News. So when Reinking’s father asked police if he could keep his son’s weapons, they said yes.

“He was allowed to do that after he assured deputies that he would keep them secure and away from Travis,” Tazewell County Sheriff Bob Huston told reporters at a Sunday press conference, the Tennessean reported, adding that the officers didn’t believe they had the legal authority to keep the guns away from Reinking’s father. “We have no information about how Travis came back into possession of those firearms.”

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However, when Jeffrey Reinking gave them back to his son, he violated Illinois gun laws and could be facing class 3 felony charges.

Under Illinois gun law, a person must get a FOID to possess a firearm. About 2.1 million people in Illinois, 6 percent of the state’s population, have the cards, the Chicago Tribune reported in 2017. The Illinois State Police revoked more than 11,000 cards in 2016, spokesman Lt. Matthew Boerwinkle told the New York Times — fewer than half of them, about 4,000, submitted the mandatory reports explaining what they did with their guns.

It’s also illegal to hand over a weapon to some people with signs of mental illness in some situations — both in Illinois and across the nation.

Read: Waffle House shooting suspect arrested after intense manhunt

Illinois state law dictates that it is illegal to give firearms to someone you has been a patient in a mental institution in the last five years. Travis Reinking was hospitalized in 2017 after he attempted to break into the White House, and it isn’t clear whether the hospitalization was for mental illness related issues, or for physical problems. If he was, that would add another class 4 felony to Jeffrey Reinking's list of potential charges.

There's also a federal law about giving a gun to anyone who has a mental illness, which dictates that it is illegal for anyone to give a firearm to any person who “has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution.”

While there have been no official reports on Travis Reinking's known mental state, his alleged struggle with mental health was far from private. At one point, his parents told officers that he was suicidal. He thought Taylor Swift was stalking him, and was once reported to the police in Illinois for stashing an AR-15 in the trunk of his car and then diving into a public pool wearing a women’s pink housecoat.

After Travis Reinking attempted to sneak into the White House last year, and his father seized his weapons, an officer called Jeffrey Reinking and told him that “when he gets back home, he might want to lock the guns back up until Travis gets mental help, which he stated he would,” according to reports from the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office obtained by the Washington Post.

“The police reports speak for themselves,” Huston told reporters at a Sunday press conference. “I think anyone can conclude after reading them that there’s evidence [Reinking] has mental health issues.”

Cover image: Emergency workers walk outside a Waffle House restaurant Sunday, April 22, 2018, in Nashville, Tenn. At least four people died after a gunman opened fire at the restaurant early Sunday. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)