There are some strange inconsistencies in the OP article about Booth and Detonics. It is all rather discombobulated.
First the problem of Booth owning gun companies as a felon. If the companies were corporations, then Booth could have acquired controlling interests in each without breaking the law. This would be because it was the corporations, not Booth, that owned the guns. I cannot find any laws that say felons cannot own stock in a corporation that manufactures firearms.
Also, Booth may have sued for the restoration of his rights.
Of course, NC is not one of the states that has laws for restoring the rights of felons. So getting a CCW there would not have been legal. However, whether or not Booth actually had a CCW there seems dubious. The source for the claim is from an unnamed investigator. Given the claim that the sheriff's department dropped its investigation into Booth because of embarrassment in wrongly issuing him a CCW, then it isn't likely the department would 'fess up to the problem so that the matter could be verified. In other words, the claim that Booth had a NC CCW is likely non-falsifiable.
The OP's article says that booth acquired Detonics in 2007 from George Skipper who purchased the company in 2004. The purchase in 2007 is noted here.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...iqp-DO&sig=AHIEtbROZmRJ28figEmUWh63nSi3EXapWQ
According to Detonics' history page,
http://detonics.ws/history/, 2004 saw Detonics having Jerry Ahern as its president but makes no mention in a change of ownership at that time.
The OP article says Booth got the company from Skipper in Spring of 2007 and that Skipper sued to get the company back in the summer of 2007. Strangely, Detonics own history site makes no mention of being owned by Skipper or Booth and says that in November of 2007 that ownership went to Bruce Siddle and Dr. Steve Stahle.
http://detonics.ws/history/
So followng the chronology, we have Detonics supposedly changing hands three times in one year (Skipper to Booth to Skipper to Siddle and Stahle). Somehow, that just does not seem very likely.
Here is where I think the article got especially flaky.
According to an eyewitness, an IRS agent was frequently a guest of Booth’s at Victory Arms. It seems rather odd that a federal agent would frequent an establishment run by a convicted felon.
So there is another unnamed source making claims that cannot be verified and the unverified claim being used as the basis for some stretched conspiracy theory invocation. First is the claim of the friendship with the IRS agent and the statement that it was odd that a federal agent would frequent an establishment run by a felon. It really isn't all that odd given shared mutual interests. For example, in some states, felons can own bars. There isn't any reason that a federal agent could not frequent the bar of a felon. Of course, all this assumes that the IRS agent would have had any knowledge that Booth had been a felon unless the agent had decided to track down Booth's history for some reason. The IRS agent would have no reason to assume Booth was a felon given that he owned a gun company.
As federal agencies in smaller localities such as Greensboro often share office space and close relationships with other agencies, it isn’t absurd to wonder if the agent’s alleged friendship with Booth and chummy relationship with other federal agencies became a factor in the local ATF’s refusal to act.
Now the weird part. Since the supposed IRS agent frequented Victory Arms as a friend of Booth and that the agent was "chummy" with other federal agencies (given proximity of offices), then all this relatedness somehow got the BATF to not act against Booth. Just how in the world does the author think an IRS agent is going to have the pull or influence to keep BATF from doing their job?
So the basis for the relationship of the IRS agent and the BATF is close proximity of shared office space along with other federal agencies. Okay, so what shared offices would those be? The BATF in Greensboro isn't even in the same zip code as the IRS offices. The IRS offices are located at 320 Federal Place, Greensboro, 27401. The BATF offices are located at 1801 Stanley Road, Greensboro, 27407. The IRS and BATF are approximately 8 miles apart.
In other words, the conspiracy notion that the BATF did not move on Booth because of Booth's supposed relationship to an IRS agent who was chummy with other federal agencies like the BATF due to geographic proximity of shared office space is garbage.
Are we even sure that the Booth who did time for kidnapping is even the same Booth with crappy business skills? Their names may be the same, but the NC prison record does not include a picture of Booth. On doing a quick Google of my first name, middle initial, and last name, I see that "I" am a urologist, archaeologist, employment attoreny, am currently attending Ohio State, have been missing since 2006, purchased land in Missouri, and am 1 of 33 people with my name on Facebook. I dunno, but given the claim that the IRS and BATF had shared offices is obviously wrong, I have to wonder the the investigatory skills of the author of the article are such that there really has been a direct link made between Booth the felon and Booth the gun company owner.
