The man who sold Seth Aaron Ator the AR-15 he used in a shooting in Midland-Odessa last year pleaded guilty to two charges Wednesday, according to the Department of Justice.
The 45-year-old Marcus Anthony Braziel, of Lubbock, admitted to selling the AR-15 to Ator on Oct. 8, 2016 – almost three years before the shooting. He pleaded guilty to one count of dealing firearms without a license and one count of subscribing to a false tax return.
Officers killed 36-year-old Ator outside a busy Odessa movie theater after Ator killed seven people and wounded 25 more in a shooting that spanned 10 miles of the Midland-Odessa area.
Braziel faces up to five years in federal prison. No sentencing date has been set yet.
According to the news release from the DOJ, Ator was adjudicated “mentally defective” and was legally prohibited from possessing firearms. He first tried to buy a gun from a sporting goods store, but was rejected after the store ran a background check from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
That was when he bought the AR-15 from Braziel, who told the DOJ he did not run background checks on any of his buyers.
Braziel told the DOJ that he regularly bought lower receivers (the part of the gun that holds the trigger and hammer and has a slot for the ammunition magazine) and then used milling equipment to build out the pieces into fully functioning guns, selling them for $100-$200 profit. He said he usually sold the guns out of his garage or in a sporting goods store parking lot.
The DOJ found that in addition to Ator, Braziel inadvertently sold guns to a convicted felon, a man under felony indictment, and an illegal immigrant within a four-year timespan.
The DOJ said Braziel kept his unlicensed gun dealing a secret and also concealed his profits from gun sales from the IRS.
“As this case makes clear, dealing firearms without a license isn’t some obscure, technical violation. It is unlawful conduct that has real-world impact and the potential for devastating results," said U.S. Attorney Erin Nealy Cox in the Wednesday news release. The Justice Department is committed to enforcing our nation’s long-held gun laws, designed to prevent firearms from falling into the wrong hands.”