- March 10, 2025
The day his son was sentenced to 25 years in prison for manslaughter, Thomas Merrill stood before a judge and explained where his son obtained the gun used in the crime.
His son, William Carson Merrill, pled no contest last year to charges of manslaughter after he shot and killed his wife with an AK-47. When police searched his house on Covington Lane after the shooting, they recovered more than 20 guns.
William Carson Merrill said his wife’s death was an accident.
“I know he might look like John Dillinger,” Thomas Merrill said, “But I’ve had (the guns) all my life. I’ve had them since I was a kid. I wasn’t going to use them anymore — that’s how he got them.”
Thomas Merrill cried as he spoke. “I didn’t know he was a felon,” he said. He paused. “I didn’t know.”
As a previously convicted felon, William Carson Merrill could not legally own a gun. If he had walked into a Palm Coast gun store and tried to buy one, he would have failed a background check.
Currently, it’s legal for private gun owners to transfer ownership to other private individuals without implementing a background check, said Steve Nobile, owner of HSDS Guns in Palm Coast. While there’s a paper trail from manufacturers to dealers to buyers, that’s where the trail ends. That’s also where the background checks end.
“This is a loophole that needs to be closed,” said Flagler County Sheriff Jim Manfre, adding that he supports citizens’ right to own firearms. “Every person who buys a gun should go through a background check.”
Merrill Shapiro, president of the Flagler County Democratic Club, supports President Barack Obama’s proposal for tightening gun regulation. Highlights of the proposal include extending background requirements to private transactions and limiting magazine capacity of guns sold.
“I do not understand,” Shapiro said, “how it is that people cannot hear the voice of the blood of these 5- and 6-year-old children killed in Newtown, calling from the ground and saying we’ve got to put a stop to this madness.”
Shapiro supports the right of citizens to own guns, but he thinks they should be available on the same basis that a car is available. A driver’s license can be taken away by the government, Shapiro said. Before people are allowed to drive cars, they must pass tests for knowledge and safety. There are laws against driving while intoxicated.
Shapiro said weapons used for hunting and protection are fine, so long as they are responsibly regulated. But assault-type weapons, he said, don’t have any reasonable place in private ownership. He believes it would prevent felons from owning a gun. Shapiro said he recognizes that people will still break the law, so private gun transactions likely won’t ever end.
Manfre agreed: “It would take increasing enforcement from the federal government to require these background checks, but it appears that’s how guns get in the hands of criminals. So, it would be worth it.”
When Circuit Judge Raul Zambrano sentenced William Carson Merrill, he scolded him for breaking a basic tenant of gun safety: pointing a gun at another person and pulling the trigger.
“We all are concerned with our rights, rights, rights,” Shapiro said, “but we are not as concerned with our responsibilities.”
NOTE: This one part in four about guns in Flagler County. Click here for the other three.
