Here's one report this morning:
Online court records showed Ator was arrested in 2001 for a misdemeanor offense that would not have prevented him from buying firearms legally in Texas.
Police said the arrest took place in the county where Waco is located, hundreds of miles east of Odessa. Online court records showed he was charged then with misdemeanor criminal trespassing and evading arrest. He entered guilty pleas in a deferred prosecution agreement wherein the charge was waived after he served 24 months of probation, according to records.
Federal law, The Associated Press reported, defined nine categories that legally would prevent a person from owning a gun. The categories included being convicted of a felony, a misdemeanor domestic violence charge, being adjudicated as a "mental defect" or being committed to a mental institution, being the subject of a restraining order or having an active warrant. Investigators have said Ator had no active warrants at the time of the shooting.
Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted Monday that Ator didn't go through a background check for the weapon he used in Odessa. He did not elaborate, and a spokesman referred questions to the Texas Department of Public Safety, which didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Wonder why they're not revealing how he got the gun he used? Bought it using a "loophole", like "off the internet", and don't want to inspire copycats?
Will this now be sufficient grounds for issuing a red flag confiscation order?
Rocio Gutierrez, who lived next to gunman Seth Ator in Odessa, told The Associated Press this week that Ator often would fire at animals, mostly rabbits, at all hours of the night.
"We were afraid of him because you could tell what kind of person he was just by looking at him," Gutierrez said. "He was not nice, he was not friendly, he was not polite."