Posted on 02/16/2008 8:05:37 PM PST by Extremely Extreme Extremist
MADISON, Wis (AP) ― A Green Bay-based Internet gun dealer who sold a weapon to the Virginia Tech shooter last year sold handgun accessories to the man who killed five at Northern Illinois University on Thursday.
Eric Thompson said Friday that his Web site, www.topglock.com, sold two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster to Stephen Kazmierczak on Feb. 4, just 10 days before the 27-year-old opened fire in a classroom and killed five before committing suicide.
The order was shipped on Monday and records of the sale provided to The Associated Press by Thompson show Kazmierczak received the order on Tuesday.
Kazmierczak carried a rifle and three handguns into the classroom Thursday. Thompson said he had no idea whether the shooter was using the holster or magazines he sold. Each magazine can hold 33 bullets. Thompson said his site did not sell Kazmierczak any bullets or guns.
Authorities said two of the weapons he used in the shooting - the pump-action Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun - were purchased legally Feb. 9 in Champaign, Ill., where Kazmierczak was a student.
This is the second time that a Web site run by Thompson's company, TGSCOM, Inc., has been connected with a campus shooting. Another Thompson site www.thegunsource.com also sold a Walther .22-caliber handgun to Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people in April on the Virginia Teach campus before killing himself.
"I'm still blown away by the coincidences," Thompson said Friday. "I'm shaking. I can't believe somebody would order from us again and do this."
Thompson said he checked his sales records after the name of the shooter was made public on Friday. Those records show the sale made to Kazmierczak for a total price of $105.62. The items were shipped to an apartment in Champaign and signed for by someone other than Kazmierczak.
Thompson said he contacted the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives within five minutes of realizing the latest connection shortly after 9:30 a.m. Friday.
Thompson said his Web site is well-known among gun users on the Internet so it is not surprising that someone looking for accessories for a Glock would find it. But being tied to both of the shootings is "unnerving," he said.
"I still feel just absolutely in shock," he said. "I feel like I was run over by a truck."
Thompson said he has no way of knowing whether Kazmierczak found out about his Web site from the publicity it got after the Virginia Tech shootings, but the thought crossed his mind. The Web site did see an increase in traffic after that shooting, he said. Thompson said he also received many phone calls and threats.
He said he's worried the same thing will happen this time around. But he decided to go public because he thought the public has a right to know as much as it can about the shooter and not feed off of rumors or outright lies.
I don’t know much about guns and I believe every law abiding citizen that is in their right minds should be able to arm themselves, HOWEVER, I think there should be some sort of review on how weapons are sold online. And I think there is nothing wrong with crimminal checks and waiting periods so that crimminals and weirdos will be deterred.
http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=116453
The VT shooter was NOT on meds. Maybe he should have been, but he wasn’t.
I know that, I have a few twenty and thirty round ones myself, but not for a cheap-a88 glock. But That would have taken away from the joke!
whodat
dropped “sarc” between the and tag....
So it turns you into a democrat?
According to the article, he only sold magazines and a holster to the NIU shooter, none of which require FFL involvement. That the NIU shooter decided to order from this particular person can only be blamed on the media, for publicizing the fact of his relationship to the VA Tech shooter.
This should do wonders for his website’s business. I may buy something myself for a cousin (I don’t own a Glock).
Further confusing matters is that Remington makes both pump shotguns and pump rifles
Worse, a Kennedy.
While you can buy a firearm on the Internet, it must be shipped to a regular local licensed dealer, from whom you must pick it up after doing all the paperwork that you would have had to do in order to buy direct from him. In other words, it's no different from going to a dealer, wanting a gun he doesn't have in stock, and having him order it for you
LOL! At least I could get in on the trust fund.
While correct in a very narrow grammatical sense these "he bought his guns on the internet" claims are extremely misleading. The media watching public is being told, sometimes in almost those very words, that guns can be purchased over the internet and somehow avoid background checks. This is simply not true. The weapon must be transferred through a FFL local to the purchaser who must complete the same checks as if he sold a gun from his own inventory to the guy. The only advantage to an internet purchase is more selection and maybe a price advantage.
Make sure to point this out to anyone with whom you discuss this issue. Also point out that the recurring violence always seems to happen in a place with laws or rules against carrying.
“I think there should be some sort of review on how weapons are sold online”
Go here (gunbroker.com) and try to buy a firearm, see what you have to DO! You still need to go to a FFL and fill out a NICS form and get background checked, then you recieve the weapon you paid for. Don’t be misled by the lame msm.
Do the Google search and then decide if the Pharma companies would tell you if it posed a threat. Did your doctor, before prescribing, find out if you were just a little "blue", or had you threatened to drown your babies like the Houston mother did? Most women feel a let down after childbirth until their hormones adjust. Women have gotten along just fine for thousands of years without SSRI's after childbirth. The woman in Houston that drowned her children was just off her SSRI's. How many of these stories did we hear about before say, 1980? How many now, after SSRI's?
To just believe that somehow people are just different today, is naive. Is there any government agency keeping track of murderers and suicides are on or off meds at the time?
Whether you believe it or not, don't you think it's worth looking into before we ban the second amendment? I'm 56 years old and when I was growing up, I took my guns to school to hunt after school. I walked downtown with guns over my shoulder many times walking from the Army-Navy Store( where I bought ammo) to home and to the Texas City Dike and the city dump. Nobody ever thought a thing about it. I belonged to a gun/shooting club when I was 9 years old and carried my gun to the ice house to shoot competition. Nobody ever shot anybody and suicides were few and far between. Today, I'm frightened to even put a gun in a car in case someone may see and call the cops on me. If you see your neighbor putting his gun in his car and it's not hunting season, do you secretly wonder if he's going to a school or a mall to get even with his wife for a cold dinner? Times have changed, but I think people have changed more. Just like the Freeper that had Oxycontin offered for pain, in the old days, you just took some asprin and maybe a hit of Black Jack for good measure. Now, when you walk in the door, you walk out with a scrip for SSRI's because you don't "feel" good.
In my opinion he took a pro-active action in order to prevent future unwarranted and biased scrutiny into his totally legitimate business.......I commend him for his action.
"We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!"
~Senator Charles Schumer, 1993
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