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Notes -
I feel like this isn't a case about your right to a firearm per se, but a case about your right to lie to get into a mental institution and then say "take backsies, I was just trolling" later.
As far as I can understand it, the timeline is:
In 1983, T.B. was involuntarily committed in Ancora. There's some skepticism over exactly what degree of behavior this involved (ie, TB says he was violent pre-admission and then some time later was released after questioning, Ancora wrote that he was violent after admission), but T.B. does not claim that the commitment was illegitimate or trolling.
In 2022, T.B. went to LifeStream for outpatient treatment claiming interest in treatment for anxiety (and depression?), but really wanting to get a 'I'm not crazy-crazy' note. Neither anxiety nor depression would be disqualifying for firearms purchase even if he did have them (probably. NJ's a little arbitrary here).
T.B. was not trying to undo the LifeStream visit, but to remove the records about the Ancora commitment. The court held that the standard was not just that " their illness has either "substantially improved" or is in "substantial remission" since their discharge from a mental health facility" -- which it clearly had -- but that T.B. had to actively prove that the expungement of his Ancora record was in the public interest, and as a result it was not sufficient to demonstrate he was not actively dangerous. They had evidence that the man's mental health had improved, and none that it had not, and decided that this left the question unanswered and unanswerable. They had evidence that the man was not dangerous (literally "speaks volumes about not that he’s dangerous to the public safety"); the judge ducked it because the judge determined on his own that TB might forget a safety maybe.
It's possible (even more-likely-than-not) that the courts would have been able to withhold expungement under a more serious standard focusing on dangerousness or on continuing mental illness. But the issue is that they didn't have to actually interact with that more serious standard or any standard at all, and Rov_Scam's jumping in to inform us that it's tots reasonable anyway.
EDIT: you are correct that there was no 2A analysis involved.
I think your objection may be conflating two or three issues - lack of clarity over the standard that should or was used, the connection between that standard and 2A rights, and @Rov_Scam's comment about problems with his claim the record should be expunged. It's bad that court processes can be abused to deny someone their 2A rights, but the states have other reasons for wanting this information, so the state putting the burden on the individual to get the record expunged and erring on the side of retained records makes sense. (Note: I'm not endorsing a policy of such, merely noting it's rational.) Either way, the 2A implication is incidental to the state standards, even if one is incredulous that procedures won't be abused. The comment about the problems with this specific claim would equally apply, had there been no 2A implication. It's easy to imagine a quasi-mirror scenario with 8A and a convict failing to get mental health records considered in their sentencing.
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