I was reading about this case in another forum. Apparently they had plenty of evidence that he had sold guns without a license, but that crime only carries a maximum 5-year prison sentence no matter how many guns you sold.
So instead of getting an arrest warrant for the crime they could probably prove he did, they got a search warrant for all his electronics in the hope that they could find evidence he was making straw purchases- i.e, he knew the eventual recipient of the gun was not legally able to purchase it themselves when he acquired it. Each of those would be a separate count and has a heavier prison sentence, so they were really fishing for evidence so they could threaten him with decades in prison instead of just 5 years.
I was reading about this case in another forum. Apparently they had plenty of evidence that he had sold guns without a license, but that crime only carries a maximum 5-year prison sentence no matter how many guns you sold.
So instead of getting an arrest warrant for the crime they could probably prove he did, they got a search warrant for all his electronics in the hope that they could find evidence he was making straw purchases- i.e, he knew the eventual recipient of the gun was not legally able to purchase it themselves when he acquired it. Each of those would be a separate count and has a heavier prison sentence, so they were really fishing for evidence so they could threaten him with decades in prison instead of just 5 years.
They just wanted to kill a guy. The specific pretext didn't really matter.
Since I'm not a psychotic government killer I can only speculate but I would just assume both in this case.