Even after his initial run-in with authorities, he kept up the practice for years. In , Madison police found a Taurus 9mm pistol during an investigation, then traced it back to a purchase Caldwell had made two weeks before. Eventually, the ATF found that 11 guns recovered by police during investigations had been purchased by Caldwell.
Caldwell posted more than listings for guns on the website, according to prosecutors, sometimes explicitly noting the weapons were brand-new and unfired. Two years after he first came to the attention of the ATF, agents organized an undercover sting, buying a Walther. But while Caldwell was still under investigation, he sold a weapon on Armslist and, months later, the gun somehow arrived in Chicago.
When it did, Police Commander Paul Bauer responded to a call in the Loop and caught up with a suspect. In the struggle that followed, Bauer was shot six times and killed with the gun. Caldwell, according to the ATF, described selling guns as an addiction. Police executed a search warrant on his home and uncovered 44 firearms as they kept building their case.
Owning a lot of guns is not in itself a crime, and undeterred, Caldwell sold another gun to an undercover investigator on Armslist a month later. He pleaded guilty to illegally selling guns in , nearly three years after first being warned by the ATF. Over the years, the website has become a major destination for firearm buyers and sellers. The site can be used legally, and its terms of use explicitly direct users to follow applicable firearms laws.
Law enforcement faces legal barriers to policing rogue sellers like Caldwell, but the law has also put Armslist itself out of reach. The same legal protections meant to help the internet flourish have also ensured the guns keep flowing. So when does selling guns turn from a hobby into a full-fledged business enterprise?
One person might, for example, inherit dozens of antiques and sell them without issue. But another person might buy a handful of guns from a registered seller, flip them in private sales without conducting background checks, and be deemed engaged in the business. The ambiguity of federal law — and the fact it is rarely enforced — leaves it open to exploitation. And Armslist is home to many sellers whose activity falls in a gray area.
The Verge and The Trace scraped more than 2 million Armslist listings from December through March to identify users who may be skirting the law through high-volume sales. We searched the text of listings for phone numbers and isolated the numbers that appeared most frequently. Armslist encourages users to communicate through direct messages on the website, but some sellers may include direct contact information in their posts.
We identified more than phone numbers that appeared in 10 or more listings. The most used phone number belonged to a seller in South Carolina who was associated with more than listings on Armslist during the period of time covered by our scraping. The user denied posting ads on the site, but confirmed their phone number, which was included as contact information on each ad. Thirty-eight other phone numbers appeared in 50 or more posts on the site. The Trace and The Verge called every phone number linked to 25 or more listings — nearly in total.
We spoke to 10 sellers altogether. None of those sellers said they had a license to deal firearms. Two acknowledged that they used Armslist to turn a profit on sales, while the rest reported using the site primarily to offload firearms in their private collections. But only a handful said they took customers to a licensed firearms dealer to perform a background check before making a sale. But he wished that there was an easy way to review the history of a potential buyer.
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Take a look at the seller membership levels. It has a search feature, but it is not prominent. You have to scroll past the ads to actually see the brand listings, because the ads are purely local. Similar to Craigslist, once you click a city, the URL changes. For example, I am browsing on fort-worth. TexasGunTrader requires both buyers and sellers to register. Like Armslist, it is free to buy and sell.
The advantage of TexasGunTrader over Armslist would be that if your shop is in Texas, you will probably fare better. Hopefully this post has provided you with the information you need to pick at least a couple of channels to use for selling firearms and other hunting or self-defense inventory safely, credibly and profitably online. Do you have a multi-location local business? Do you have complex inventory management needs and need to synchronize your listings across multiple websites?
While GunBroker is compatible with ecomdash and CrossPostIt , it looks like for all of the other channels, you will have to manually manage the listings. Looking to sell a hunting rifle, Manning decided to join a local gun trading group on Facebook.
Within minutes of posting his pictures he had several offers. After running a background check on a potential buyer, Manning agreed to a price and exchange location the same day he posted the gun. While Manning did a background check on his buyer, neither it nor any paperwork is required during the process.
And that accessibility has some calling for change.
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