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Buying Firearms Online Largely Unregulated, Police Say

SALLISAW (KFSM)-A Sallisaw man accused of shooting his mother to death this week used a gun he bought on Facebook, according to court documents. Jessie Mosby fa...

SALLISAW (KFSM)-A Sallisaw man accused of shooting his mother to death this week used a gun he bought on Facebook, according to court documents.

Jessie Mosby faces a first-degree murder charge in the death of his mother Karen Gregg. He’s being held without bond at the Sequoyah County Jail awaiting his first court hearing. Police said Gregg’s body was found in the driver's seat of car on West Ruth Street in front of Armstrong Bank.

According to court records, one of the suspect's family members told police the suspect bought the 9mm handgun from someone on Facebook. Sallisaw Police Chief Terri Franklin said those kinds of purchases are legal.

“Anybody can buy a handgun individual to individual,” Chief Franklin said.

5NEWS spoke to a veteran who served in Afghanistan and NRA member about what happened in Sallisaw.

“You come into these gun shops and stuff like that, a lot of people can`t afford new weapons, and you go, and you get on Facebook and these other sites where people are trying to sell. “It`s how people are trying to get rid of stuff, they need the money,” Steve Gaines said.

Police said federal law allows a person to buy a gun from an unlicensed seller, but only if the person buying the gun isn't prohibited by law from having one.

Gun store owner Bud Smithson said the internet is basically unregulated when it comes to gun sales.

We have to by law run a background check and if they fail, they cannot buy one here,” Smithson said, “but nothing stops them from turning around and going and buying one off the internet.”

The victim's body has been sent to the state crime lab for an autopsy, but police said they believe she died from a single gunshot wound to the head.

Mosby is due in court on Wednesday (March 11).

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