Weapon: Assault rifle, illegal in California, was bought legally in Nevada

The suspect in the deadly shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival Sunday evening legally purchased his rifle in Nevada earlier this month and brought it across the state line even though it’s illegal to possess the weapon in California, authorities said.

Santino William Legan, the 19-year-old believed to have killed three people and injured 12 others, was living with family members in Nevada when he purchased the “AK-47-type assault rifle” on July 9, Gilroy police Chief Scot Smithee told reporters Monday morning.

Big Mike’s Gun and Ammo, a gun store in Fallon, Nevada, about an hour’s drive east of Reno, posted a statement on its Facebook page confirming Legan purchased his gun there.

“We feel so very sorry for the Families, I am heartbroken this could ever happen,” the post read. “I did not know this individual. He ordered the rifle off my internet page. When I did see him, he was acting happy and showed no reasons for concern.”

The gun could not have been legally purchased in or brought into California, Attorney General Xavier Becerra said at a news conference Monday.

“The reach of California law ends at our borders, so we cannot control what other states do,” Becerra said. “That’s what makes it so tough if other states don’t match us.”

California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country and bans possession of most assault rifles. Californians younger than 21 years old also are prohibited from purchasing rifles in the state, under a law passed in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting last year.

Nevada, on the other hand, has far looser rules. Nevada law allows residents 18 and older to purchase assault rifles from licensed firearm dealers after passing a background check and currently doesn’t require a check for sales between private individuals. A new law — inspired by the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017 — also will mandate background checks for private sales or transfers, although it doesn’t go into effect until next year.

A UC Berkeley study in 2017 found that in the two weeks after gun shows take place in Nevada, there’s a corresponding spike in gunrelated deaths and injuries across the state line in California. And more guns that are traced by law enforcement agencies in California come from Nevada than any state other than California or Arizona, according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“Our nation is a patchwork of gun laws, and that’s why we continue to see these horrific shootings,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of the Moms Demand Action gun control group. “You’re only as safe as the closest state with the weakest gun laws.”

The federal government banned assault weapon sales in the 1990s, but that ban expired in 2004. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who introduced the original ban and has been pushing to reauthorize it, argued that Legan would not have been able to buy his rifle if the ban had been in place.

“It’s time for Congress to debate this bill and vote on it,” Feinstein said in a statement. “We know these weapons are falling into the wrong hands and we know there are ways to prevent this from happening, but still Republicans block our every effort to help.”

Craig DeLuz, a California gun rights activist and the publisher of the 2A News website, argued that it was premature for officials to call for stricter gun control laws without getting all the facts about the shooting first.

“The real discussion has to be around how do we address these incidents of violence, not how do we restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens should they have to confront someone who seeks to engage in this kind of violence against them,” he said.

Legan grew up in Gilroy. It’s unclear when he moved to Nevada and when he returned, Smithee said. Public records show that a person by his name lived as recently as May in Walker Lake, a small town more than 100 miles southeast of Reno wedged between the lake from which it gets its name and the mountains.

The District Attorney’s Office in Mineral County, Nevada, confirmed that FBI agents early Monday raided a unit in a triplex in Walker Lake that Legan was believed to have used “during the days prior” to the Gilroy shootings.

The property manager who runs the triplex said he rented the second apartment three months ago to a man between the ages of 19 and 25, who showed up with no furniture and hardly any belongings. The man didn’t use the name Santino Legan when he moved in, said the property manager, who doesn’t live near the property, and declined to give his own name or the name his renter used. The manager said the renter paid three months’ rent upfront, and a background check showed no red flags. Still, he was concerned enough by the news to arrange to hand over the lease and other documents related to his tenant’s rental to the Mineral County District Attorney to aid its investigation into the shooting.

“I don’t think anybody knows anybody” in Walker Lake, he said, “because they’re there to get away from everybody else.”

Legan was killed in a firefight with three Gilroy police officers soon after he began shooting at the festival, according to authorities.

“Despite the fact they were outgunned with their handguns against a rifle, those three officers were able to fatally wound the suspect, and the event ended fairly quickly,” Smithee said.

John Donohue, a Stanford University law professor who studies gun violence, said the shooting represented more evidence that states’ gun control policies can have a huge impact on their neighboring states.

“This shooting shows that the lax gun control states contribute to deaths in the most serious gun control states,” Donohue said. “It really is shameful that we’re surrounded by states that don’t take this seriously.”