He stayed with a Kashmiri friend, Zahid Mir,[7] in his Reston, Virginia apartment, and he worked for a courier service.[8] That work would be decisive in his choice of target: "I used to pass this area almost every day and knew these two left-turning lanes [were] mostly people who work for CIA."[3] According to Kansi, he first began to think of attacking CIA personnel after he bought a Chinese-made AK-47 from a Chantilly, Virginia gun store. The plan soon became "more important than any other thing to [him]."[6]