Lucas M Thomas

The Spectrum

MESQUITE, Nev. — The general manager of Guns & Guitars, the Mesquite store where Stephen Paddock purchased a rifle as recently as Sept. 28, said there was nothing amiss when Paddock purchased a bolt-action rifle at his store the Thursday before carrying out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

“It was a normal day. He came in and filled out his paperwork, went across the street, did some shopping at Walmart, came back, shook my hand, said ‘have a great day’ and out the door he went,” said Christopher Sullivan. Sullivan’s parents own the store, which has been open in Mesquite since August 2015.

“He never would’ve given an inclination about what was going on in his mind,” Sullivan said. “It’s something I’ve run through my head a million times trying to figure out if I’ve missed something.”

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The rifle purchased at Guns & Guitars that afternoon was not found in the hotel room where Paddock carried out his attack in Las Vegas. Sullivan said Paddock purchased five guns at the store over the course of a year, but also frequented the business to have his guns cleaned after shooting them.

“He was a very active shooter, he shot a lot. He owned a lot of guns, a lot of AR-15-style rifles. We did a lot of gun cleaning for him. I’ve cleaned pretty much every gun he owns,” Sullivan said. “Unfortunately, a couple of those guns were used in that hotel room.”

'It just wasn’t there, man'

Despite being a recognizable customer, Sullivan said Paddock never showed any warning signs. He said he never detected aggression, anger or irritation from Paddock.

“He was upbeat, happy, normal guy — shake hands, have a good day. It just wasn’t there, man. At some point, he snapped. What made him snap? I don’t know.”

Paddock passed a background check every time he bought a gun from the store, and all of the firearms he bought from Guns & Guitars were purchased legally. Sullivan said he’s been cooperating with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) since the shooting.

Sullivan said “just knowing that he was a customer of ours, and the fact that I shook hands with him on Thursday, the day he checked in to that hotel room and decided he was gonna start killing people,” has made the days since the incident “emotional.” He said he became physically ill upon hearing the news of the massacre.

On Tuesday night, Sullivan said he cried for 30 minutes while replaying his interactions with Paddock, wondering if he missed a warning sign.

“That’s what gets me the worst, wondering if I missed something. So I’ve literally replayed it in my mind thousands of times and we did everything the right way, but there wasn’t anything we could’ve done about it,” Sullivan said. “For us to know we’ve been touched by him in our lives and as a community is tragic. It truly is. Could we have done anything differently? I don’t think we could have. Nobody in town knew who he was or what he was capable of, and neither did we.”

"He was a normal, average 'Joe Blow' kind of guy. There was nothing special that happened. He came in a couple of different times, we dealt with him as a normal customer," Michel told The Spectrum & Daily News this week.

'None of that is true'

Since the shooting, Sullivan said he’s received a flurry of physical threats and hate mail from people saying he has blood on his hands. He said there are several inaccurate reports circulating about his store.

Guns & Guitars does not sell automatic weapons, nor does the store have a license to do so. Speaking to the Desert Valley Times on Wednesday morning, Sullivan said he hoped to clarify inaccurate reports about what role his store had in Paddock’s attack.

“A lot of the media has been saying that we sold him fully automatic weapons, which we most certainly did not. We’re not licensed to do that, nor would we do it. We haven’t sold him any of the bump stocks they’re talking about, because we don’t carry them in the store. And we’ve never sold him any ammunition. And they’re saying he bought all his guns, he bought all his ammunition, and he bought his bump stocks here. And none of that is true,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said the store has never applied for a license to sell fully automatic weapons because his father never expressed any interest in selling them and the community in Mesquite would “frown” having them in the community. He also said that none of the guns that Paddock brought in to be cleaned ever had a bump stock attached.

Under federal law, gun stores are required to report multiple handgun purchases to the ATF, but not multiple rifle purchases.

The lack of notification for multiple rifle purchases creates a loophole where people can stockpile assault weapons, similar in design to those used by the military and police SWAT teams, with little federal detection, said David Chipman, a former ATF special agent and senior policy adviser at Americans for Responsible Solutions, which advocates for stricter gun rules.

'Gun-buying panic'

The shooting that has claimed the lives of 58 people has rehashed a long-standing debate over what place automatic rifles have in America.

“I ask myself the same question,” Sullivan said. “I don’t have any need for a fully automatic weapon.”

“A lot of people want to own them because they can,” he said, adding that the political landscape often influences buying patterns. “A lot of people now are buying them because they think that right is going to be taken away.”

Before last presidential election, Sullivan said “it was all we could do to help every person coming through the store because they thought the president coming in was going to take all their guns,” he said, referring to Hillary Clinton.

“That’s the gun-buying panic that Americans go through," he said.

In the cases and on the wall inside Guns & Guitars are the type of bolt-action rifle that Paddock purchased last week, a single AR-15, and a selection of handguns. Sullivan said the most popular guns he sells are “defensive handguns.”

“In this town, we have a huge retirement community so a lot of those folks aren’t physically capable of defending themselves with their hands, or with a baseball bat or your traditional home protection. So they come to us for that. That’s a service we provide to them that I’m proud to provide to them,” he said.

Though he questioned why someone might need an automatic weapon, he pointed out that many people own more guns than those that were found in the hotel room and at Paddock’s Mesquite home and don’t act out violently.

“Can we hold ourselves morally responsible for that? I don’t think we can,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing. The Second Amendment is obviously a beautiful thing. People have the right to defend themselves, and you can’t take that away from them.”

Sullivan said he was as shocked as anyone in Mesquite to hear the news Monday morning.

"As a business and as a family, we mourn for all the victims in Las Vegas. We mourn for all the families. We mourn for the people in Mesquite who had interactions with him who are trying to figure out what they missed. That one man does not define us as a community. We are a far better community than that," he said.

Contributing: Kevin Johnson and Rick Jervis, USA TODAY. Follow Lucas Thomas on Twitter: @LucasThomas14

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