Tosa man with gun trove to plead guilty of illegal dealing
A Wauwatosa man has agreed to plead guilty in federal court to dealing firearms without a license and in the process will get rid of nearly 400 guns he had in his home, court records show.
Daniel Pelate, 61, is set to formally enter his plea July 7 before U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman.
Both the prosecutor and defense attorney will recommend two years of probation. Pelate faced up to five years in prison. As a felon, he will not able to legally possess a gun.
Pelate also agreed to pay a $50,000 fine. The 391 guns he has in his home will be sold through a federal firearms license holder. The fine will be paid out of the proceeds and Pelate will get to keep the rest, according to his attorney, Thomas Halloran.
Halloran said Pelate broke the law but labeled it a "technical violation." He said the case may have been hard to defend given the volume of guns involved. He said Pelate was a collector who was selling the guns on the side. His full-time job was as a salesman.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives warned Pelate that records showed he was breaking the law. Halloran said Pelate then backed off, but not enough in the government's view.
"This was not his job or his profession," Halloran said. "This was a hobby for him."
According to a search warrant, Pelate bought more than 500 firearms from an outdoors store and then sold them through a website or at gun shows.
The firearms, which were primarily used, were purchased from 13 Gander Mountain stores across Wisconsin and sold through the website Gunbroker, according to a search warrant.
Pelate recruited Gander Mountain employees to watch for used firearms and call him when they came into the store, according to the affidavit. He paid the employees a kickback for the referrals, the warrant says.
Dealing guns without a license is a federal crime, but such cases are rare and time-consuming for federal agents to prove. Agents have to show that selling guns is a "principal objective of livelihood and profit" for a person. If someone is engaged in the business, he or she must obtain a federal firearms license, which requires the seller to perform background checks on gun sales.
The law does not require that background checks be done by individuals who privately sell guns to other people. Individuals have used this private sale exception to sell firearms at gun shows.
In an effort to crack down on rogue gun sales, President Barack Obama in January directed the ATF to step up scrutiny of people selling guns without a license along with other efforts intended to address gun violence. Those efforts are being challenged by the gun rights lobby and its supporters in Congress.
According to the search warrant, Pelate obtained a collector of curio and relics license in 2014 from the ATF. The license allows the sale of guns that are at least 50 years old but does not allow the holder to be a general firearms dealer.
Records obtained by the ATF show Pelate bought 531 guns from Gander Mountain from 2003 to 2015, spending nearly $170,000 on the guns; 513 of the guns were used. Some 428 of the guns were purchased from 2010 to early 2015, records show.
The ATF agents found he had 487 transactions for guns and accessories through Gunbroker.
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