The gunman who killed three Michigan State University students on Feb. 13 used cash and a debit card to purchase the two handguns found on him that night, with one of the weapons used during the mass shooting, according to a university official.

The shooter paid $324.99 in cash in October 2021 to buy the Taurus G3 9mm handgun from a local retailer that he used in the shooting, Dana Whyte, a spokesperson for the Michigan State University Department of Police and Public Safety, told Payments Dive by email and text message. Whyte didn’t identify the retailer.

The gunman entered the Michigan State University campus on the evening of Feb. 13, according to a press release and timeline of events posted online April 27 by the university’s police department.

He killed three students in an academic hall and the student union in the nearly one hour he spent on campus. The police events timeline showed the gunman died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound as officers approached him at about midnight on Feb. 13. In addition to killing three students, the shooter wounded five other students, who survived their injuries.

The gunman also carried a Hi-Point C-9 9mm handgun that night, similarly purchased at a local retailer, using $169.99 in cash and putting $4.56 on a debit card to buy it in September 2021, Whyte said in the text message. The university police press release said “evidence concludes” that he did not use the Hi-Point handgun during the shooting. Whyte didn’t response to a request to identify the retailer in the gun sales.

The university is located in East Lansing, Michigan, in the south-central part of the state. Police said there is no conclusive motive on why the gunman targeted the school because he had no personal or professional connection to the university, and he hadn’t applied for employment there in recent history.

The gunman watched campus shootings and other violent topics online in the days before the attack, according to a news report from the Lansing State Journal newspaper.

—Debbie Carlson

The gunman who pled guilty last month to a 2019 mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart store bought the gun used in the attack from an online retailer that typically receives payments via credit card.

Brian Park, the gunsmith at the Plano, Texas store Gunmaster, said the retailer’s records show the shooter picked up a WASR-10 semi-automatic rifle at the store on June 28, 2019. The gun, which is a Romanian-made variant of an AK-47 assault rifle, was transferred to Gunmaster from a Bishopville, Maryland-based online retailer called Atlantic Firearms.

While the order receipt accompanying the rifle from Atlantic Firearms included the shooter’s name, the gun’s serial number, a shipment date and the importer’s name, Century Arms, it didn’t include any payment information, Park said in an interview.

The Atlantic Firearms website shows a GP WASR 10 AK 47 rifle available for purchase at $972.99, with options to pay using Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover credit cards, or debit cards and pre-paid cards. It also accepts certified check or money orders. In an email, Atlantic Firearms declined to confirm any information about the sale. 

Park said typically people who buy guns online use a credit card. Purchasers can buy guns from Atlantic Firearms with a check, but it’s “very uncommon,” he added.

Calls and emails to the U.S. District Attorney for the Western District of Texas and to the shooter’s court-appointed lawyer, Joe Spencer, were not returned. In addition to federal charges for the killing of 23 people at the store, the shooter faces separate state capital murder charges.

Generally, paying with credit may not end up being much of a commitment to pay, pointed out Adam Skaggs, chief counsel for Giffords Law Center. “A lot of these (shootings) either involve suicide at the end of the completed mass shooting, or sort of ‘suicide by cop,’ so to speak,” Skaggs said in an interview. “If you're not planning to be alive in a week or a couple of weeks…then you're obviously not going to be concerned with using your credit card.”

Giffords Law Center worked with other groups to advocate for the adoption of a dedicated merchant category code for credit card sales. An international organization published that new standard last month.

“If these merchant category codes were wisely implemented” it may flag unusual purchase activity, Skaggs said. “The code is not to deny sales, it’s just to simply flag suspicious sales,” he added.

Skaggs said there is no comprehensive research data showing how active shooters pay for their weapons as it hasn’t been possible to track gun purchases in the past. In 2018, The New York Times reported that gunmen in 13 shootings between 2007 and 2018 used credit cards. 

A spokesperson for El Paso’s police department said there is no information regarding how the shooter paid for his gun in their records. 

—Debbie Carlson

The gunman who killed eight people at three Atlanta-area spas on March 16, 2021, paid cash for the weapon he used, after he was unable to use his debit or credit cards.

Earlier that day, the 22-year-old shooter used about $460 in cash at the retailer Big Woods Goods to buy a 9mm handgun and a box of ammunition, according to a court transcript from July 27, 2021 that cited Robert Aaron Long as he pled guilty to four of the murders in a Cherokee County, Georgia, courtroom.

In that case, the shooter killed four people at Youngs Asian Massage, near Acworth, Georgia. He received four consecutive life sentences, plus 35 years, without the possibility of parole in that case.

The shooter is also alleged to have killed four other people at two other spas in Atlanta that day, using the same 9mm gun. He has pled not guilty to those murder charges and faces trial in Atlanta’s Fulton County, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The shooter told Judge Ellen McElyea that he filled out the necessary paperwork at the Canton, Georgia, retailer to purchase the gun, but was unable to use his cards. “I had way overdrawn on both of those,” said Long, according to the transcript. He did not identify the issuers of the cards, or other details about the cards.

Big Woods Goods says on its web site that customers can use credit cards for their purchases of firearms and other merchandise.

The shooter recounted for the judge that after his card payments were declined he asked a store employee to hold the merchandise for him so he could go to a bank to cash a work check for about $750 that he had received days earlier. Long did not specify who wrote the work-related check; however, the transcript shows he said he was employed by a company called General Landscaping.

The shooter told the judge that he bought a gun that  “was one of the cheaper ones,” according to the transcript. 

—Debbie Carlson

The shooter charged with killing seven people at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, and wounding dozens more, purchased his gun from an online retailer for shipment to a local store.

The online retailer was identified as BudsGunShop.com in a report by the news outlet The Daily Beast, which also reported it was shipped to the Lake Villa, Illinois, store Red Dot Arms, for pick-up.

While the method of payment hasn’t been identified, BudsGunShop.com said on its website that it takes payments by money order, certified check, personal checks, Automated Clearing House payments and credit cards. It also provides a financing option through Credova Financial for “low monthly payments,” which may be interest-free in the first three months in some cases.

Local law enforcement officials described the gun used in the shooting as a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 semi-automatic rifle purchased in 2020. While the shooter awaits trial, victims are pursuing civil cases against gun-maker Smith & Wesson, Red Dot Arms and BudsGunShop.com in Lake County Circuit Court.

“The payment type will definitely be a topic of discovery,” Ari Scharg, an attorney at the Chicago firm Edelson representing plaintiffs in the civil case, said by email.

A person who answered the phone at Red Dot Arms said the shop wasn’t providing any information about the incident and declined to be identified. BudsGunShop.com didn’t respond to an email inquiry.

—Lynne Marek

The gunman charged in a May 14 shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store used cash to purchase the firearm that police say he used to kill 10 people and wound three others. 

Robert Donald, owner of vintage gun dealer Vintage Firearms in Endicott, New York, said the shooter in that incident paid cash for the semiautomatic Bushmaster XM 15 target rifle he bought Jan. 19. The purchase totaled $875. Donald confirmed the details of the purchase.

The suspected gunman, 18 at the time of the shooting, is charged with killing 10 people at the Tops Friendly Market store in Buffalo, according to a Buffalo Police Department report. He has been charged with federal hate crimes in the racially motivated attack, The New York Times reported, and is being held without the possibility of bail while he awaits his trial.

Donald, whose shop primarily sells older, collectible guns, said payment methods at his store vary. “Some people give you a check, some people pay in cash, others give you a credit card,” Donald said. “Probably credit card is the biggest, but there’s a good spread over all three of those.”

—Caitlin Mullen

The Uvalde, Texas, shooter who killed 21 people, most of whom were children, used a debit card to pay for the guns fired in the May 24 crime before killing himself.

At a press conference days after the mass shooting, a reporter asked how an 18-year-old working at a Wendy’s restaurant and earning a minimum wage could buy such expensive weapons.

Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, answered this way at the time: “He used a debit card,” McCraw said. “To your point, it’s very expensive (to buy such a gun) and a debit card is not a credit card so that means he had money in the bank.”

The Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting Interim Report, published on July 17, said the shooter purchased guns and ammunition in May just days after he turned 18, the legal age under federal law for purchasing a rifle, and just days before his attack on the school. The shooter ordered a Daniel Defense DDM4 V7, an AR 15-style rifle, at a cost of $2,054.28 from an online retailer for shipment to a Uvalde gun store where he could pick it up, the House report said, without naming the online retailer or the gun shop. He also ordered ammunition valued at $1,761.50 from the online retailer and had it shipped to his doorstep, the report said. 

The shooter also bought another rifle, a Smith & Wesson M&P15, also an AR-15 style rifle, for $1,081.42 from the Uvalde store receiving his online gun shipment. He also bought more ammunition from that store.

That Uvalde gun store has been identified by several media outlets, including the New York Times, as Oasis Outback, which doubles as a restaurant.

As for the online retailer, gun-maker Daniel Defense operates a web site, but it’s not clear whether it sold the shooter the other gun used in the Uvalde incident. At least one news site posted a receipt, reportedly from the shooter, that suggests Daniel Defense was the online retailer. The site also offers buy now-pay later financing options facilitated by Credova Financial, allowing for “smaller monthly payments” and interest-free loans over three months.

Calls by Payments Dive to the Uvalde store’s general manager, Bob Porter, as well as the online retailer, weren’t returned.

A spokesperson for McCraw’s office declined to provide further details about the debit card. “This is an active and ongoing Texas Ranger investigation and, as such, no additional information is available at this time,” said Ericka Miller, press secretary for the Texas Department of Public Safety in an emailed statement. In a phone call Miller said when a full report of the investigation is released, payment information is “probably something that will be covered.”

—Debbie Carlson