In the summer of 2021, an employee at a firearms dealer in Minnesota emailed one of the company’s compliance officers with a concern: a customer had bought six pistols in a little over a week.

The large number of purchases in such a short period had triggered a federal reporting requirement intended to alert the government to potential firearms trafficking, he wrote, and he wanted to know “if we should stop any future sales” to the person.

The sales continued. Over the next two months, the same man, Jerome Horton, bought an additional 11 guns at various stores operated by the company, a Wisconsin-based retail chain named Fleet Farm. Several of the guns were subsequently found at crime scenes or in the possession of convicted criminals, court documents show. One of them was recovered in connection with a shooting that injured 14 and killed one woman, Marquisha Wiley.

Similar cases have occurred countless times across the United States, where gun laws allow dealers to sell guns in bulk to traffickers with few consequences. The details of those sales and internal discussions about them are usually shrouded in mystery.

But newly released documents reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists shed light on firearm industry practices that experts say contribute to gun trafficking in the United States and abroad.

Earlier this year, Fleet Farm settled the case, paying the state $1 million and agreeing to make improvements to its firearms sales procedures. As part of the settlement, the company agreed to release to the public internal documents revealed during the suit, as well as depositions of its employees and other materials that, taken together, provide a rare look into the inner workings of a large gun retailer. The company denies any wrongdoing. It did not respond to several requests for comment.

The documents have been archived at University of California San Francisco and integrated into a larger collection of documents from litigation related to tobacco, opioids and other industries that impact public health.

The sale of multiple firearms to a single person is not, in and of itself, a sign of wrongdoing by the seller or buyer. There are no federal limits on the number of guns any one adult can buy as long as the buyer does not belong to certain classes of people, such as convicted criminals, who are banned from possessing firearms altogether.

But there are some behaviors that, taken together, are considered “red flags” for straw purchasing — buying a gun on behalf of someone else. Traffickers and other criminals often employ “straw purchasers” with clean records to obtain guns for them. The practice is illegal. The ATF tells dealers to be on the lookout for, among other things, people who purchase several guns over a short period, buy multiples of the same model or plunk down large amounts of cash for the weapons.

It is also illegal to knowingly sell a gun to a straw purchaser. Sellers who have reasonable cause to believe that a sale violates the law are required to decline it.

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Accountability Arizona gun shop owner faces terrorism-related charges for allegedly selling high-caliber weapons bound for Mexican cartels Apr 30, 2026

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IMPACT Nearly half of powerful .50-caliber ammo seized by Mexican government came from US Army plant, defense minister says Feb 10, 2026

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The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists hosted a live virtual discussion exploring findings of its China Capital investigation.

The event featured ICIJ reporter and Asia partner coordinator Scilla Alecci and Bradley C. Parks, executive director of AidData at William & Mary. ICIJ digital editor Carmen Molina Acosta led the discussion.

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