Nevada arms dealer sold weapon to California festival gunman

FALLON — The home-based firearms dealer who sold the weapon authorities say a California man used Sunday to fatally shoot three people at an outdoor festival in California offered condolences on social media Monday and said he “would never ever sell any firearm to anyone who acted wrong.”

A post signed by “Mike” on the Facebook page of Big Mikes Gun and Ammo said the shooter, identified as Santino William Legan, 19, whom police fatally shot moments after he opened fire, ordered the AK-47-style semiautomatic rifle from him via the internet.

“I did not know this individual,” the message reads. “When I did see him, he was acting happy and showed no reasons for concern. I would never ever sell any firearm to anyone who acted wrong or looks associated with any bad group like white power.”

Later Monday, a man who answered the door at the one-story ranch home listed as the business address in a residential neighborhood in Fallon, about 65 miles east of Reno and 350 miles from the shooting site, declined further comment and turned a reporter away.

Both the firearms business and the property address list the owner as Michael Christopherson, a Navy veteran and engineering technician with the Department of Defense at the Fallon Naval Air Station, according to his LinkedIn page. A U.S. Navy truck was parked Monday evening in the driveway outside the house in Fallon.

Nevada connections to the California shooting, which came in the final hour of the Gilroy Garlic Festival in the late afternoon Sunday, began turning up earlier in the day Monday. Mineral County District Attorney Sean Rowe said deputy sheriffs there helped the FBI in an early-morning search of an apartment in Walker Lake, about an hour south of Fallon. The residence was believed to have been used by the shooter, Rowe said in a statement. No other details were provided.

Police in Gilroy said Monday the weapon was legally purchased July 9 in Nevada, leading to speculation that the shooter, a Gilroy resident, had used a Nevada ID to buy the weapon. Federal law would have barred Legan, as a California resident, from obtaining an assault weapon in Nevada because of California’s stricter gun laws; interstate rifle sales must comply with laws in the states of both the buyer and seller.

California law classifies the weapon — a WASR 10 semi-automatic rifle built in Romania that resembles an AK-47 military weapon — as an assault rifle that is banned in the state. But it is legal in Nevada.

“That weapon could not be sold in California. That weapon cannot be imported into the state of California,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Monday.

In a statement on the Gilroy shooting, the gun-control organization Giffords said Legan would have been prohibited from transporting any firearm into California without having it shipped first to a California dealer. But a California dealer also could not legally deliver any firearm to a minor under 21 or an assault weapon to anyone without a special weapons permit.

With a Nevada ID, Legan would not have had to pass a background check to obtain a firearm from a private seller and would “likely have been able to acquire firearms — including assault weapons — from both licensed or unlicensed gun sellers in Nevada,” Giffords’ statement said.

The Nevada Legislature this spring strengthened rules for private gun sales to require background checks starting in 2020, one of two gun control measures state lawmakers enacted this year.

Nevada officials, including Gov. Steve Sisolak and Attorney General Aaron Ford, pledged that Nevada would aid the investigation in any way, but they deferred to their California counterparts on details of the ongoing probe. The three people killed in Gilroy on Sunday included a 6-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a 25-year-old man. Twelve people were injured.

“Nevadans know firsthand the deep pain and suffering the Gilroy community is experiencing right now, and we want them to know we offer our deepest and most heartfelt condolences,” Sisolak said in a statement.

Contact Bill Dentzer at bdentzer@reviewjournal.com or 775-461-0661. Follow @DentzerNews on Twitter. The Associated Press contributed to this report.