Gun used in Odessa shooting shows risk when chain of illegal sale starts with home-based hobbyist dealers – By Nick Penzenstadler (USA Today) / May 28 2021
Federal firearms agents had one major target as they swarmed the parking lot of a Texas movie theater hours after a deadly shooting spree in 2019: the shooter’s AR-15-style rifle.
Within hours, they had traced the gun by its serial number – 16020756 – through a West Virginia warehouse of federal gun records to a gun shop called Mulehead Dan’s in Lubbock, Texas, where they knocked on the door.
That door did not lead to a traditional retail store with racks of ammo and gear. It opened into the three-bedroom gray brick ranch home of retiree Danny Delashaw, then 68.
Although the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives inspects fewer than 15% of all firearms dealers each year and rarely revokes licenses, some of those who face the strictest penalties are home-based sellers such as Delashaw, records show. The ATF calls them “kitchen-table” dealers and, based on some estimates, they hold a majority of all gun shop licenses.
These dealers are often targeted by the ATF since they don’t invest in the same inventory tracking and security – treating their business as a hobby – and don’t fight Department of Justice attorneys with the same vigor established chains or stores have displayed in revocation examinations over the past several decades.
