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I agree that mental health professionals should be forced to report potentially dangerous people at minimum to the federal database so they can't buy guns.
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"Potentially dangerous" is not the criterion for reporting. The standard for involuntary commitment is quite high. It requires that a patient has done something violent or made specific threats. It's not sufficient for a mental health professional to "have a bad feeling" about a patient, and this is as it should be.
The way the current law works is that in order to deprive a mentally ill patient of his rights, he must first be determined by a professional or other authorized person
to be an immediate danger to himself or others. That determination is enough to have someone hospitalized for a maximum of 72 hours. After that, a judge must rule that, yes, this person is dangerous and should be involuntarily committed or required to undergo some other form of treatment. (In some states, a judge can commit someone to outpatient treatment, for example.) After a judge has so ruled, that finding should be reported to the FBI so that the person is included in the NICS database of prohibited persons.
This is what is technically known as "due process," and it is a requirement, under the Constitution, before someone can be deprived of rights -- including the right to own a gun.
The problem occurs largely at the level of the state reporting systems: some are merely inefficient or underfunded, and others actively refuse to submit these records to the FBI because they're limited by
state privacy laws. This absolutely does need fixing.
New York passed a reporting requirement such as you propose as part of the SAFE act: reporting a suspicion that a person might pose a risk is now required of mental health professionals in that state, and it's leading directly to confiscation of guns. This is not a good thing at all, and it's being challenged by lawsuits even as we speak.
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And just for the record, most people seem to have forgotten that there is
no evidence that the Sandy Hook shooter ever received a diagnosis of mental illness. He does seem to have had an "autism spectrum" disorder, which is not a mental illness, but an organic condition, but even that has yet to be confirmed by a medical professional who treated him. In general, such disorders are in no way predictive of violence.