ST. PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison took the giant Fleet Farm chain to court for complicity in illegal firearms trafficking. Fleet Farm stores knowingly, repeatedly and illegally sold guns to people who resold them to people who couldn’t legally own a firearm, Ellison said. In some cases, the guns were used in crimes, he said. Ellison alleged these cases:
> A Fleet Farm gun was used in a St. Paul bar to kill a 27-year-old man and injure 14 bystanders. The store had sold the gun to a straw purchaser, Jerome Horton Jr.
> Another Fleet Farm gun, also sold originally to Horton, was found by a 6-year-old boy in his family’s front yard. The gun apparently had been discarded by someone fleeing police after a shooting.
In all, Ellison said that 37 firearms, maybe more, were sold to one straw purchaser. Seven of these guns, he said, have been linked to crimes.
Verbatim
Ellison: “Gun dealers and retailers have an obligation to state and federal law that they must meet. This includes stopping straw purchasing. Fleet Farm had a duty under the law to spot and stop this behavior. Nevertheless, Mills Fleet Farm continued to engage in straw purchase transactions even though they knew, or should have known, that these customers were not making legitimate purchases for themselves and were likely to resell them illegally. In doing so, Fleet Farm has profited from selling firearms to sham purchasers who then transferred these firearms to criminals or other dangerous persons.”
Ellison. Attorney general since 2019. Formerly six terms as a Minnesota representative in Congress.
Fleet Farm profile
Stewart Mills founded a company in Brainerd, Minnesota, in 1922. The family later opened an auto dealership and auto parts stores. In 1955 Mills and two sons founded the current hardware and building supplies company under the Fleet Farm banner. They built the company into a chain of 48 stores in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas. These include big boxes in LaCrosse, Rochester and Winona. Some stores are small hardwares, some are giant big boxes and full-scale limber yards. The headquarters: Appleton Wisconsin. In 2016 the Mills family sold Fleet Farm to the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts of New York, reportedly for $1.2 billion.
Logo everywhere. Even on caps for sale. The family name Mills was stricken from the name when New York investors bought the company in 2016.