Minnesota AG releases documents he says prove Fleet Farm willfully ignored straw buyer warning

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison released documents Wednesday regarding his office's investigation into Fleet Farm, alleging the company "ignored an internal warning" about selling firearms to a "straw buyer."

In February, the Wisconsin-based retailer settled a lawsuit filed by Ellison in 2022 accusing the company of selling nearly 40 firearms to straw purchasers — people who legally buy guns with the intent to sell to those ineligible to do so themselves — in a span of a year and a half. One of these guns, purchased by Jerome Horton, was used in the deadly 2021 Truck Park bar mass shooting in St. Paul.

As part of the settlement, Fleet Farm paid a $1 million fine and agreed to change its policies around detection and prevention of straw purchaser sales, as well as bolstering employee training, introducing new software to track gun sales across its stores and instituting a monitoring system that alerts staff to purchasers linked to gun crimes.

Fleet Farm recently filed a petition for summary judgement in the settled case, which sparked Ellison's move to release the documents pointing to the retailer's negligence, including an incident report email from a store manager regarding his concern over selling firearms to Horton. Ellison says that email was sent to the company's firearms compliance team, but a team member admitted to disregarding the email in a deposition.  

Also released Wednesday is an employee training video and PowerPoint presentation about straw buyers, which uses Horton's case as an example of what to look for and how to alert the compliance team.

"To us, this is an incredibly clear admission from the company that it was negligent in selling to Horton," said an attorney's office spokesperson.

In 2024, Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill into law that boosts criminal penalties for straw purchasers in the aftermath of the standoff in Burnsville that led to the deaths of two police officers and a firefighter.

Shannon Gooden, who died by suicide in the standoff, was a convicted felon and was barred from buying and owning firearms and ammunition, but acquired them from girlfriend Ashley Drydahl. She pleaded guilty to straw purchasing and is in the midst of a nearly four-year prison sentence.

This story will be updated.