The gun sellers who supplied Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock with his massive arsenal of 49 firearms are speaking out to express their shock, insuring that they followed the letter of the law and that the 64-year-old raised no suspicions.
Paddock, a retired millionaire from Mesquite, Nevada, opened fire at a Las Vegas music festival Sunday night, killing 58 people and wounding another 527 before he committed suicide.
In audio records from the massacre, the firestorm of bullets is seemingly endless – indicating that Paddock was using an fully-automatic rifle.
In subsequent searches of his 32nd floor hotel room in the Mandalay Bay resort and casino, as well as his car and two other homes in Nevada, police found a grand total of 49 weapons at Paddock’s disposal.
In the aftermath of the shooting some of the gun store owners and workers who sold to Paddock have spoken out, saying he collected firearms legally and raised no alerts on background checks.
Christopher Sullivan, the manager of Guns and Guitars in the killer’s home of Mesquite, Nevada, says he sold a rifle to Paddock just days before the massacre.
Chris Sullivan, he manager of Guns and Guitars, says he sold a rifle to Stephen Paddock as recently as September 28
When Sullivan learned of the deadly shooting, he said it made him physically ill. Above, the store in Mesquite, Nevada
Sullivan is pictured posing with a cutout of U.S. President Donald Trump in a Facebook photo. Trump has been a major supporter of the 2nd Amendment
The store was founded by Sullivan’s parents, Mike and Jan. Its website notes: ‘With Mike’s extensive knowledge of guns and guitars and Jan’s talent for making things happen, the store is thriving.’
Sullivan told CBS that the last time Paddock came into his store was on September 28 – the day he reportedly checked into the Mandalay Bay and three days before the shooting.
According to The Sun, Paddock bought a $600 bolt-action Ruger American .308 rifle.
When he first heard about the shooting – now the deadliest in U.S. history – Sullivan said it made him ‘ill’.
‘It made me physically ill to think that we had interacted with him and he had committed such a tragedy,’ Sullivan said.
Sullivan says Paddock has been a customer of the store for about a year, and in that time he had sold him five firearms.
He says all of the firearms were sold legally and he doesn’t feel guilty because he followed the law.
Chris Michel (left) owns Dixie GunWorx in St George, Utah. He called Paddock an ‘average, everyday Joe Blow. Nobody that stood out; no red flags’
Michel says that Paddock bought one firearm at the store in February, on his third visit to the store
‘We did everything right and we can’t control what someone does once they leave this store,’ he said.
However, he says he finds it chilling that he was one of the last people to come into contact with Paddock.
‘This morning over coffee I was having a moment in myself thinking that I may have very well been the last person to shake hands with that man,’ he said.
One thing Sullivan added was that he never sold Paddock ammunition or so-called ‘bump stocks’ – which can modify a semi-automatic gun and make it fully automatic.
Investigators say that of the 23 weapons found in Paddock’s hotel room, 12 of them had bump stocks added.
Bump stocks are completely legal, but so far no gun shop that sold to Paddock has taken responsibility for selling them to the shooter.
Authorities say his collection included guns purchased in Nevada, California, Texas and Utah. Some were bought at gun stores in Las Vegas and near his homes and others at chain retailers like Cabela’s
David Famiglietti, owners of the New Frontier Armory in Las Vegas, sold to the shooter, and doesn’t believe that gun control laws should be strengthened after the deadly incident
Above, a picture of Famiglietti’s store in Las Vegas. He says he sold a rifle and a shotgun to Paddock last spring
Some of the gun shops where Paddock shopped are being closed lipped.
Sources told the Los Angeles Times that at least six of the guns were bought at a Cabela’s in Verdi, Nevada, and several other firearms in the collection were acquired from Discount Firearms and Ammo off the Las Vegas strip. But workers at both locations declined to comment.
But others, like Sullivan, have come out to defend their actions.
David Famiglietti, the owner of New Frontier Armory in north Las Vegas, told the New Yorker that he sold Paddock two guns this past spring. He says the weapons were sold ‘lawfully’ after Paddock passed a background check.
He went into further details about the weapons, saying one was a shotgun with an ‘effective range’ of thirty yards and the other ‘a rifle that did not leave my store as a Machine Gun, nor did it leave my store modified (legally or illegally) in any way to shoot more than one round per pull of the trigger.’
In other words, Famiglietti says he didn’t sell any bump stocks to Paddock, or any already automatic weapons.
Famiglietti said the weapons he sold Paddock are not ‘capable of what we’ve seen and heard in the video without modification’.
Authorities say his collection include guns purchased in Nevada, California, Texas and Utah – including Discount Firearms and Ammo in Las Vegas (above)
Some were bought at gun stores in Las Vegas and near his homes and others at chain retailers like Cabela’s (including this Cabela’s in Verdi)
He says Paddock only purchased at the store once ‘so it wasn’t someone we knew personally’.
Echoing the sentiments of many gun lovers, Famiglietti said he disagrees with the calls for increased gun control after the shooting. He believes it’s wrong for people to blame a ‘tool’ instead of ‘figuring out what would cause a person like this to do something so horrible’.
‘I sell tools. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, they are used lawfully. I can’t fix the rest, unfortunately, just like the C.E.O. of Ford or Chevy can’t stop people from killing people with their cars,’ Famiglietti said.
Nonetheless, he says the shooting has left him reeling.
‘We’re very sad about the news of this tragedy. We’re in the business of selling firearms legally and took all precautions on this sale, as we do with all sales. My staff takes their job very seriously, and if there were any “red flags,” the sale would have halted immediately,’ he told NBC News.
The owner of a St. George, Utah gun store says they also sold a weapon to Paddock, and also after he passed a federal gun background check.
Dixie GunWorx owner Chris Michel says Paddock visited his store three times before buying a shotgun in February.
Paddock killed at least 58 people and injured 527 others after shooting at concertgoers from a Mandalay Bay hotel window in Las Vegas
Michel says that Paddock told him he was new to the area and was visiting local gun shops. the store is located about a 40-minute drive from Paddock’s home in Nevada.
Michel says he chatted with Paddock to get to know him and make sure there were no signs that he should not be allowed to buy a gun.
‘There was nothing that really stood out with him,’ he told Time magazine. ‘He was just like a normal person that comes into a gun shop that’s looking to buy. He was saying that he wanted something for home defense.’
In an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune, Michel says he was overcome with ‘shock, horror and grief’ for the victims after learning about the Sunday night shooting.
Like Sullivan, he too experienced a physical reaction when he learned the shooter’s identity.
‘Then I recognized him, and my gut dropped out from underneath me,’ he said.
Paddock lived in Mesquite, Nevada and had no prior criminal convictions in the state.
He purchased a home in a retirement community for just over $369,000 in 2015 according to public records.
He lived there with his 62-year-old girlfriend Marilou Danley, the same woman police announced they were seeking to question on Sunday night as they began their investigation into the horrific terror attack.
Paddock had both hunting and fishing licenses according to public records, as well as his pilot’s license, but no criminal record in the state of Nevada.
The retired accountant had worked as an internal auditor at Lockheed Martin for three years in the late 1980s, and was a manager and investor in apartment complexes located in Mesquite, Texas and California which made him millions according to his brother.
Paddock was also the son of Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, a serial bank robber who ended up on the FBI Most Wanted list back in 1969 when he escaped from federal prison in Texas while serving a 20 years sentence.
The FBI kept him on the list for the next eight years, and he was eventually found one year after he was removed from the list in 1978 while outside an Oregon Bingo hall.
The agency said that the fugitive had been ‘diagnosed as psychopathic’ and also had possible ‘suicidal tendencies.’
Paddock had committed suicide by the time police breached the door to the room from which the gunman had opened fire at the Mandalay Bay Resort just after 10pm on Sunday night.
It marked the end of what has now become the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, which left 59 dead and more than 500 injured.
The attack played out as Jason Aldean performed on stage to close out the third and final day of the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival, which was taking place across the street from the resort.
Over 22,000 people were in attendance at the event, and described the attack as ‘nonstop gunfire,’ which only stopped when the gunman went to reload his weapon.
It is not yet known what weapon or weapons the gunman used in the attack.