Asked today to comment about the affidavit, Old Prairie owner Robert Hayes sounded surprised and said he had no comment. Legitimate dealer turned Smith down Smith had been rejected by a regular gun dealer last month because a background check showed that an ex-girlfriend who says he had abused her had taken out a protection order against him. Dave Sanders, a spokesman for the Illinois State Police, said the state issued Smith the gun owner's ID card June 18. That background check didn't turn up the protection order because the order had Smith's middle initial and other details wrong. Smith tried to buy two 9 mm handguns and a shotgun June 23 at Heights Gun and Hunter Supplies in Peoria Heights, Singer said.
Federal law prohibits convicted felons and anyone under such an order from purchasing a firearm.
Smith's application was denied at the gun shop, and the NRA says he should also have been arrested. Federal authorities say it's not that simple. Singer said that a denial can trigger an investigation, but authorities simply do not have enough information to make an immediate arrest. Distributed hate literature at schools Smith, a member of a white supremacist group called the World Church of the Creator, distributed hate literature while he was a student at the University of Illinois and later a student at Indiana University in Bloomington. Authorities say his holiday rampage included shootings in Chicago, two of its suburbs, three downstate Illinois cities and Bloomington.