MINNEAPOLIS – A federal judge said the big-box gun retailer Fleet Farm cannot hide behind a federal gun law to escape culpability for sales to third-parties using false pretenses. The decision, by U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, allows Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to proceed toward a federal trial against Fleet Fam. Ellison has accused the company of selling 37 firearms to straw purchasers at its Blaine store. Ellison has made these points: The Blaine purchasers, Jerome Fetcher Horton Jr. and Jean Elwood, then resold the guns without traceable paperwork – in some cases to felons who had been barred by law from possessing guns. One of these guns was used in the deadly mass shooting at the Seventh Street Truck Park in St. Paul in 2021. Fleet Farm had tried to head off Ellison’s suit by claiming the U.S. Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act shielded it as a retailer based outside Minnesota from responsibility. In his 37-page opinion Judge Tunheim wrote that Ellison’s allegations were “clear examples of how illegally obtained firearms endanger the public in a way that legal firearms typically do not.”
