UC San Francisco’s Industry Documents Library, in partnership with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, has made public nearly 700 internal documents from a Midwest retailer as part of the state’s lawsuit alleging the company ignored an internal warning before selling firearms to a straw buyer.
The Aug. 19 release marks the launch of the library’s new firearm industry collection and is the first state-led agreement to include the public release of internal firearms industry documents, making these 694 records publicly accessible for the first time.
... The Firearms Industry Documents Archive will shine a light on corporate practices that cause harm and help to inform solutions to protect public health and safety.
Kate Tasker, director of the UCSF Industry Documents Library
The documents were obtained during Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s 2022 lawsuit, which alleged that Fleet Farm, a 50-store chain that sells firearms, hunting equipment, and other goods in five Midwest states, negligently sold firearms to straw buyers –– people who purchase firearms on behalf of another person –– and contributed to gun trafficking in Minnesota.
Fleet Farm sold at least 37 firearms to two straw purchasers over 16 months, often selling multiple, nearly identical guns in a single transaction or within a short period. One of those guns was later fired in an October 2021 shootout at the Truck Park bar in St. Paul that killed one person and injured 14 bystanders.
Under the February 2026 settlement, the company agreed to significant policy changes to help prevent straw purchases, pay a $1 million penalty, and publicly release the records.
“To those who were skeptical of this lawsuit when I filed it, and skeptical that we could use civil law to hold corporations accountable for their roles in public-safety crises, I trust these documents will put that skepticism to rest,” Ellison said. “My team and I are creating a whole new body of work in successfully using civil law to improve public safety and protect the well-being of Minnesotans everywhere, and we’re going to keep building on it.”
Inside the document library
Founded in 2002, the UCSF Industry Documents Library collects, preserves, and provides free public access to internal documents from industries that affect public health. Its collections include records from the tobacco, opioid, chemical, pharmaceutical, fossil fuel, and food industries.
With the addition of the Fleet Farm records, the library is launching the Firearms Industry Documents Archive as a new resource for researchers, policymakers, journalists, and the public to better understand corporate practices and inform future research, legal action, and public policy.
Support for UCSF’s Firearms Industry Documents Archive comes from the Firearms Accountability Initiative, a collaborative, nonpartisan effort to hold the firearms industry accountable for its role in American gun violence.
“As with the tobacco industry collections, the Firearms Industry Documents Archive will shine a light on corporate practices that cause harm and help to inform solutions to protect public health and safety,” said Kate Tasker, director of the UCSF Industry Documents Library.
More than 1,200 publications have been written based on industry documents, which have paved the way for major tobacco control legislation, including a U.S. law that gives the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the power to regulate tobacco and a global health treaty under the World Health Organization that prevents the industry from influencing tobacco control laws in many countries around the world.
“They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, and I hope we are able to shine some sunlight on the firearm industry with this release of documents,” Ellison added. “I’m extremely grateful to the University of California, San Francisco’s Industry Documents Library for their partnership, and I hope lawmakers, journalists, and researchers will use these documents to improve the public health and safety of the American people.”
Ignored internal warning
The documents show that Fleet Farm ignored an internal warning about suspicious firearm purchases by Jerome Horton, one of the two straw buyers identified in the lawsuit. Yet just months later, the company used those very same sales to train employees how to identify suspicious purchasing activity, calling them “pretty obvious” examples of transactions that should have raised red flags.
After Horton bought three pistols on July 31, 2021, Fleet Farm employee Cory Klebs alerted one of the company's firearms compliance employees that Horton had purchased six pistols in just over a week and documented this with two Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Multiple Sale forms, which are required when customers buy multiple firearms over a short period. Klebs asked whether Fleet Farm should stop selling guns to Horton, but no one responded.
Fleet Farm completed 11 more sales to Horton before the ATF identified him as a straw buyer in October 2021. Later that year, the company used the same ATF forms Klebs had submitted in employee training, telling staff their “radar should be up” when they encounter similar purchases and that they should seek approval before completing those sales.
The impact of Fleet Farm’s sales
Several of the firearms that Fleet Farm sold to Horton and another straw buyer, Sarah Elwood, were later recovered by law enforcement after being used in crimes or found in the hands of people prohibited from possessing firearms. Among them was a Mossberg MC2C 9mm pistol sold to Horton on July 31, 2021, despite the internal warning. The gun was later fired during the Oct. 10, 2021, mass shooting at the Truck Park bar in St. Paul that killed 27-year-old Marquisha Wiley and injured 14 others.
The Truck Park shooting was not an isolated case. Other firearms sold to Horton were later recovered after being fired in Minneapolis, found by a 6-year-old child, and discovered in the possession of prohibited individuals. A handgun sold to Elwood was also recovered after it was allegedly used to threaten someone in public.
But most of the 13 firearms Fleet Farm sold to Elwood have not been recovered.