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Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that both guns were once seized in criminal cases in Memphis. The officials described how the weapons made their separate ways from an evidence vault to gun dealers and to the shooters.

The use of guns that once were in police custody and were later involved in attacks on police officers highlights a little-known divide in gun policy in the United States: Many cities and states destroy guns gathered in criminal probes, but others sell or trade the weapons in order to get other guns or buy equipment such as bulletproof vests.

In fact, on the day of the Pentagon shooting, March 4, the Tennessee governor signed legislation revising state law on confiscated guns. Before, law enforcement agencies in the state had the option of destroying a gun. Under the new version, agencies can only destroy a gun if it’s inoperable or unsafe.

Kentucky has a similar law, but it’s not clear how many other states have laws specifically designed to promote the police sale or trade of confiscated weapons.

A nationwide review by The Associated Press in December found that over the previous two years, 24 states — mostly in the South and West, where gun-rights advocates are particularly strong — have passed 47 new laws loosening gun restrictions. Gun rights groups are making a greater effort to pass favorable legislation in state capitals.

John Timoney, who led the Philadelphia and Miami police departments and served as New York’s No. 2 police official, said he doesn’t believe police departments should be putting more guns into the market.

“I just think it’s unseemly for police departments to be selling guns that later turn up,” he said, recalling that he had once been offered the chance to sell guns to raise money for the police budget.

“Obviously, we always need the money but I just said, `No, we will take the loss and get rid of the guns’,” said the former police chief, who now works for Andrews International, a security consulting firm.

A spokeswoman for the Memphis police said gun swaps are a way to save taxpayer money.

One of the weapons in the Pentagon attack was seized by Memphis police in 2005 and later traded to a gun dealer; the gun used in the Jan. 4 courthouse shooting in Las Vegas as sold by a judge’s order and the proceeds given to the Memphis-area sheriff’s office. Neither weapon was sold by the Memphis law enforcement agencies directly to the men who later used them to shoot officers.

In both cases, the weapons first went to licensed gun dealers, but later came into the hands of men who were legally barred from possessing them: one a convicted felon; the other mentally ill.

The history of the two guns in the recent attacks was described by officials from multiple law enforcement agencies on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigations. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives provided reports on the gun traces to the investigating agencies, but is barred from publicly disclosing the results.

At the Pentagon, gunman John Patrick Bedell carried two 9 mm handguns, one of them a Ruger.

Law enforcement officials say Bedell, a man with a history of severe psychiatric problems, had been sent a letter by California authorities Jan. 10 telling him he was prohibited from buying a gun because of his mental history.

Nineteen days later, the officials say, Bedell bought the Ruger at a gun show in Las Vegas. Such a sale by a private individual does not require the kind of background check that would have stopped Bedell’s purchase.

Mike Campbell, an ATF spokesman in Washington, would not confirm the details. He would only say Bedell “appears to have purchased the gun from a private seller.”

The gun already had changed hands among gun dealers in Georgia and Pennsylvania by the time Bedell bought it. Officer Karen Rudolph, a Memphis police spokeswoman, said her department traded the weapon to a dealer in 2008 for a different gun that was better for police work.

The Ruger had sat in Memphis police storage for years at that point, after being confiscated from a convicted felon at a 2005 traffic stop.

The trail of the gun used at the Las Vegas federal courthouse is older and harder to pin down. Johnny Lee Wicks, an elderly man enraged over cuts to his Social Security benefits, opened fire with the shotgun at the security entrance to the courthouse. He killed one officer, Stanley Cooper, and wounded another.

Wicks, like Bedell at the Pentagon, was killed by officers’ return fire.

Before that courthouse attack, what records exist suggest officers in Memphis confiscated that gun in 1998.

A judge in Memphis ordered the sale of the shotgun as part of a criminal case, and the proceeds of that sale went to the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed sheriff’s spokesman Steve Shular.

He said the gun dealer who bought it later sold the weapon to a dealer in Nevada. It is not clear how Wicks got the shotgun.

Rich Wyatt, a former police chief in Alma, Colo., who now operates a gun store — and who has bought weapons from police agencies — defended the practice of police selling guns.

John Patrick Bedell repeatedly tangled with police in recent months, while his relationship with his parents — whom he lived with in a gated community in Northern California — grew increasingly contentious.

“There’s a history of mental health problems with him that the family’s been dealing with for a number of years,” San Benito County, California, Sheriff Curtis Hill said Friday.

Bedell, 36, suffered from bipolar disorder, according to court records from a 2006 California arrest for a man by the same name. That man’s birth date matches the one authorities gave for the Pentagon shooter.

Bedell had been committed to mental institutions at least three or four times, according to Hill.

His ties to family had grown strained since late last year. Two months ago, Bedell’s parents filed a missing person report about him, although he returned and the report was canceled two weeks later, Hill said.

Bedell’s mother had also come across “some information — either from an e-mail received from a company, or an online posting on a bank account or something — where on the 10th of January he had made a $600 purchase at a shooting range in the Sacramento area in California,” Hill said. Bedell would not tell her what he bought, he said.

On Friday the FBI said they believe that Bedell drove to Washington, D.C., and parked his car in a garage near the Pentagon.

Bedell “was very well dressed in a suit” and showed “no distress in his appearance” as he approached a screening area to enter Pentagon grounds about 6:40 p.m. Thursday evening, Pentagon Police Chief Richard S. Keevill said.

“He walked very directly to the officers and engaged,” Keevill said. “He was very well armed. I will tell you that he had two 9 mm semiautomatic weapons and many magazines.”

On Friday, a picture emerged of Bedell as a troubled man with an intense interest in science.

On the social networking Web site LinkedIn, a profile page for a J. Patrick Bedell in the San Francisco Bay Area — where Bedell’s family lives — described him as an “MSEE student,” short for Master of Science in Electrical Engineering.

The page said he graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1994.

The LinkedIn page said that Bedell attended San Jose State University from 1995 to 1996, but that he did not get a degree there.

In the missing person report filed in January, Bedell’s father said he worked in the San Jose area but that he did not know where.

Hill, the San Benito County sheriff, said the Bedell family filed the missing person report on January 4, a day after Bedell was stopped in Texas for speeding as he traveled west. The Texas Highway patrolman used Bedell’s cell phone to call Bedell’s family, Hill said.

“The highway patrolman wanted to know a little more information about him because when he stopped him for speeding, when he came up to the car, the interior of the vehicle was in ‘disarray,'” Hill said. The patrolman spoke with Bedell’s mother, then gave him a warning and sent him on his way, Hill said. The sheriff said the stop prompted the family to file the missing person report, Hill said.

In filing the report, Bedell’s father said John had been staying at an unknown address in San Jose after getting into a fight with his brother three weeks earlier.

It wasn’t Bedell’s first blowout with his brother. In July 2006, Bedell got into an altercation with Matthew Bedell and signed a citizen’s arrest to have him taken to jail and booked, Hill said.

A week after Bedell’s father filed the missing report in January, the parents called the police to say their son had shown up. Authorities went to the family’s home, where the parents said Bedell “appeared to be impaired, delusional, and agitated,” according to Hill.

“The agitation … was due to his mother asking him questions [such as], ‘Where have you been? What have you been doing?'” Hill said. She also asked him about the $600 purchase at the shooting range, he said.

“When she asked him to give her some details about what that purchase was, that’s when he became agitated and left the residence,” Hill said.

Authorities arrived after he had left, and although they gave out information on him to law enforcement agencies, they were not able to find him, Hill said. The family told authorities that he had a “history of mental illness.”

On January 18, Bedell’s father told authorities his son had returned home and that the missing person report should be canceled, Hill said. According to the police report, Bedell was staying at an unknown address after stopping at home.

A couple weeks later, on February 1, Bedell was picked up by police in Reno, Nevada, and charged with marijuana possession. His court date was Tuesday, but Bedell failed to show up.

Court records from California show that investigators arrested a John Patrick Bedell in June 2006 on charges of cultivating marijuana and resisting arrest.

Bedell pleaded guilty. “I sincerely request the court not find the offense to reflect a propensity for violence on my part,” he said in a signed statement in the case. “I was experiencing an episode of mental illness (bipolar disorder) during the event in question.”

Court documents from the 2006 case also include a statement from Bedell’s psychiatrist confirming Bedell suffered from bipolar disorder and describing him as “relatively symptom-free when under medication.”

In an Internet posting, JPatrickBedell referred to being arrested in 2006 on marijuana charges.

“Given my belief that cannabis prohibition is the least defensible and most unjust aspect of the prohibitionist regime existing throughout the world today, I decided in March 2006 to cultivate cannabis in full view of the world,” the person said in a 2006 podcast.

Bedell appears to have been the same man who had railed against the government repeatedly on the Internet. Through podcasts and a Wikipedia page, a man identified online as JPatrickBedell cast the government as a criminal force destroying personal liberties.

“This seizure of the United States government by an international criminal conspiracy is a long-established reality,” the man said in a podcast in November 2006, which also was published as text online.

Such an organization, the man said, “would use its powers to convert military, intelligence, and law enforcement bureacracies (sic) into instruments for political control and the domination and subjection of society, while discrediting, destroying, and murdering honest individuals within those services that work to root out corruption and faithfully serve their fellow citizens.”

In a video posted on YouTube in October 2006, a man identified as jpbedell talked about his idea for “information currency,” which he said would “create a financial market for information.” The man in the video is the same man shown in a photograph of the shooter released Friday by the FBI. The man’s voice in the YouTube video also sounds similar to the voice in the podcasts.

A person using the screen name JPatrickBedell wrote about the same idea on a Wikipedia page that was taken down early Friday.

The San Benito County sheriff read a statement from the family on Friday, saying that they were “devastated” by Thursday’s news.

“To the outside world, this tragedy is the first and only thing they will know of Patrick; to us he was a beloved son, brother, grandson, nephew and cousin,” the family said, according to Hill. “We may never know why he made this terrible decision. One thing is certain, though, his actions were caused by an illness and not a defective character.”

They expressed hope for a quick recovery of the two wounded officers, and asked that the family’s privacy be respected.

“This is a well-respected longtime local family,” Hill told CNN on Friday. “They’re a middle — upper-middle class folks who are well known in the community. They’re a good solid family.”

Hill said that Bedell’s father is a financial advisor and that his mother works at the local branch of the California-based Gavilan College.

At a news conference Friday morning, Keevill, the Pentagon police chief, said Pentagon and Metro cameras of the area show the gunman in the time leading up to the shooting.

He showed “no real emotion in his face” as he approached the officers, Keevill said. He approached the officers Thursday evening and, when asked for identification, pulled a gun out of his pocket and began shooting, authorities said.

Officers Jeffrey Amos and Marvin Carraway returned fire with semiautomatic weapons, said Pentagon spokesman Terry Sutherland.

The two wounded officers had superficial injuries and were released from a hospital, officials said.

When officers located Bedell’s vehicle at a nearby parking garage, they found more ammunition inside, Keevill said.

Authorities do not know what the man’s motive may have been, he said.

Several versions of a 2004 scientific proposal to the Department of Defense, attributed to J. Patrick Bedell, exist in multiple locations on the Internet. A 28-page version of the proposal, “Aluminum Anodization for DNA Integrated Circuits,” lists Bedell as the sole employee for the project and estimates he would work 1,000 hours at $30 an hour for a total of $30,000.

A DARPA spokesperson would not confirm whether the proposal was received, saying the agency could legally comment only on proposals it funded.

Resentment of the U.S. government and suspicions over the 9/11 attacks have surfaced in writings by the Californian identified as the man fatally wounded in a hail of return fire.

John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, Calif., was identified as the shooter and authorities said he’d had previous run-ins with the law.

Investigators have found no immediate connection to terrorism, and the attack at the massive Defense Department headquarters appears to be a case of “a single individual who had issues,” Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, said in an early morning press conference.

Keevill described Bedell as “very well educated” and well-dressed, saying Bedell was wearing a suit, armed with two 9 millimeter semiautomatic weapons and carried “many magazines” of ammunition. There was more ammunition in Bedell’s car, which authorities found in a local parking garage, Keevill said.

‘Hostile intent’
Bedell, 36, died Thursday night from head wounds received in a volley of fire with police. Keevill said the two injured officers and another officer who came to their assistance fired upon Bedell at the subway entrance into the Pentagon building in Arlington, Va.

“He came here from California,” Keevill said. “We were able to identify certain locations that he spent that last several weeks making his way from the West coast to the East coast.”

Noting that Bedell was wearing a suit, Keevill said: “There was no indication based on the way he was dressed that he had hostile intent.”

The exchange of fire lasted less than a minute but, numerous shots were fired, Keevill said, adding that he didn’t know how many because investigators were “still counting.” Bedell was not wearing body armor, he added.

The two officers injured have been released from the hospital. One suffered a thigh wound and the other was hit in the shoulder. Keevill said both were superficial injuries.

Keevill said he did not know the shooter’s motive.

“I have no idea what his intentions were,” said Keevill, who had late Thursday described the attack in this way:

“He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting” at point-blank range. “He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face.”

Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. medical examiner’s office, confirmed the man’s death and said his body arrived at her office shortly after midnight.

Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In an Internet posting, a user by the name JPatrickBedell wrote that he was “determined to see that justice is served” in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up.

Keevill said Friday that authorities had not made “a final determination” that the shooter was the same Bedell.

The user named JPatrickBedell wrote the Sabow case was “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions.”

That same posting railed against the government’s enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author’s 2006 court case in Orange County, Calif., for cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer. Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user JPatrickBedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting.

A man who identified himself as Bedell’s father told KNX Newsradio in Los Angeles that his son was a grad student at San Jose State University.

The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital’s ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army’s Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings.

Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself.

Whatever the motive of Thursday’s attack, the method resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in a barrage of return fire.

President Barack Obama was getting FBI updates on the Pentagon shooting through his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington. Since a redesign following the 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building.

After the attack, all Pentagon entrances were secured, then all were reopened except one from the subway, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

Transit officials said the station would remain closed at least part of the day Friday while the FBI continued its investigation.

Keevill said the gunman gave no clue to the officers at the checkpoint about what he was going to do.

“There was no distress,” he said. “When he reached into his pocket, they assumed he was going to get a pass and he came up with a gun.”

“He wasn’t pretending to be anyone. He was wearing a coat and walked up and just started shooting.”

Keevill added: “We have layers of security and it worked. He never got inside the building to hurt anyone.”

‘Normal guy’

Ronald Domingues, 74, who lives next door to Bedell’s parents in a gated golf course community in Hollister, said he doesn’t know the family well. But he said Bedell sometimes lived with his parents and struck him “like a normal young man.”

“He just seemed like a normal guy to me,” Domingues said. “I wouldn’t suspect he would be involved in anything like this.”