Is there a category of legal dealers who are not federally-licensed? Once you start dealing guns in earnest, you have to be federally-licensed?
Buying long guns:
“Sale of a firearm by a federally licensed dealer must be documented by a federal form 4473, which identifies and includes other information about the purchaser, and records the make, model, and serial number of the firearm”
So, short of a transaction between private individuals, the gov’t will know what guns you purchased? Sounds a lot like registration.
Non-citizens: Constitutional guarantees are usually taken to be restrictions on what the gov’t can do rather than citizens’ rights. The distinction being that non-citizens can prevail themselves of them on the country’s territory. For example, if a tourist gets arrested in the US, does he not get constitutional guarantees concerning due process? Can the gov’t censor him without being encumbered by the 1st amendment?
So, what are the restrictions for residents and tourists?
Parts of this start to involve the IRS rather than the BATFE. As I mentioned, the latter will not like it if a C&R holder starts to make many transactions (selling some of your collection is fine), although it might not be criminal. The IRS will certainly be interested in if you are not reporting your transactions.
Nope. There is no permanent registry of individual firearms at the federal level. Some states or localities may have them, often only for pistols. (Las Vegas recently or is in the process of destroying theirs).
Sorry, what are you referring to that is related to this thread? To answer that generally requires a new thread, but yes many protections are extended to visitors.
You do not need to be a citizen to own a firearm. Permanent residents (“green card”) can own.
Yep, for less egregious crimes or lapses in duty there are other discharges, like Medical, General, or Other-than-honorable, which carry less stigma (but may include some loss of benefits). Dishonorable discharge isn’t for merely screwing up, but for serious crimes.
Form 4473 is retained by the dealer, not by White-Haired Uncle. The feds can inspect those records as part of their inspections of the dealer, and can get at particular records in the course of a specific investigation, but they don’t (or at least aren’t supposed to) routinely obtain them.
The dealer is required to maintain the forms for 20 years, at which time s/he can discard them. (When the dealer ceases business, forms less than 20 years old are to be turned over to the ATF Out-of-Business Records Center in West Virginia.)
The only guns I’ve ever owned were inherited. I never took any across state lines. The little, one-shot .22 rifle that had lived in my aunt’s closet, next to a child-sized baseball bat (California), I turned in to the police during a local buy-up. I got a $50 Target gift card and no questions were asked. I may have had to show my driver’s license.
When my Mom died (Idaho), the estate had to decide what to do with the two rifles my Dad had owned and the many guns and rifles that her second husband had collected. He had been a hunter and a target shooter. He had a gun safe and the machinery to pack his own bullets. I’m just glad she had already found a home for his tins of gunpowder.
We sold them one by one to people who asked about them at first - friends and neighbors. Then we sold them, and many, many other things, at the nearest flea market. We had no license. There were no receipts. A couple of times a cop came by and looked them over, either to see if anything was amiss or to see if there was something he wanted.
I assume that things would have been different if I had been buying from a manufacturer for resale.
We found out that Mom had a concealed carry permit. She’d gone to Utah to get it. I don’t think she ever carried. I think she just wanted to be able to.
DMV bad photography has nothing on CC bad photography.
Do you live in a conservative state? Do you have some crumpled $20 bills? Can you read?
If you have all 3 of those things, or can drive to a conservative state, you can drive to a major city and look for the city convention center. There are monthly gun shows, some places it is every weekend. Walk in there.
Ignore the legitimate dealers who have tables set up. Look for someone shady looking who has a rifle slung over his shoulder, maybe with a price tag, maybe not. Ask him politely if he’s selling it. If he says no, keep looking. If he says yes, and you have enough $20s, have over the money and grab your new gun.
You will probably need ammo and magazines before you have the ability to shoot your gun wherever you like. If you have any $20s left, wander around. No background or ID to purchase ammo or magazines in most states, go ahead and load up.
That’s what is required. If you are not within the bounds a small number of cities and states or a convicted felon (washington DC, New York, Chicago), you are not even breaking the law. Stick your new rifle in the trunk of your car and drive off. Keep it in your house, whatever, you are now a gun owner. Also, there is no paper trail, so if by some unfortunate turn of events someone near you happened to have bullet holes in them made with the same caliber rifle as in your closet, you can rest easy, the authorities will not have any reason to look at you specifically.
Should it be this way? Do you feel safer knowing any idiot around you can get a gun and be irresponsible with it? Well, regardless, this is how it is.
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So, what is the situation with tourists? If I’m visiting Podunk or Grand Porks for a few weeks (from Canada), can I buy a gun? I assume the gun show thing works fine for tourists, since nobody’s asking questions - but would that be legal to possess?
Is every gun store supposed to be following the federal laws mentioned above? Presumably then they don’t sell to out-of-state or out-of-country buyers?
Yllaria mentions her mother in Idaho with a concealed carry permit from Utah. What good is that? I thought the permits would only be good for the state that issued them, or is there some agreement between some states?
The three issues in order:
Private sellers cannot sell to someone who is not a resident of their state, without involving an FFL (licensed gun dealer) from the buyer’s state. At a gun show or anywhere else. If they’re not “asking questions” as to residency, they’re breaking the law. The so-called “gun-show loophole” refers to private sellers not requiring a background check for sales to private buyers from their own state of residency. The rules on selling out of state hold.
Every gun store, as well as every individual, is supposed to follow the federal laws. They can sell to out of state buyers: the gun needs to be shipped to an FFL in the buyer’s state (who will do a background check). If the seller is a gun store, they can ship the gun themselves to the FFL in the buyer’s state, if the seller is an individual, they need to engage an FFL in their own State to ship to the FFL in the buyer’s state. Except if the gun qualifies as a Curio or Relic (C&R) - an FFL seller can ship that straight to a C&R licensed buyer, even out of state.
Most concealed carry permits enjoy some reciprocity with other states, Florida and Arizona are notable for the number of states. Utah has reciprocity or recognition with/in a few dozen states - so still useful outside Utah.
Yes, the states agree to honor each others’ permits. Not all states honor all permits, though. It really is a patchwork quilt, so you have to know the rules.
For instance, the only border state that recognizes my Pennsylvania permit is West Virginia, which only touches PA on its southwestern border. In all other cases I have to have my handgun separated from its ammunition and placed somewhere in my car where it cannot easily be accessed in order to have “safe passage”.
Once I am through the initial border state, though, I can carry a concealed weapon in most of the country.
If you’re really curious about reciprocity, you can play around with the reciprocity map.
EDIT: Oh, wow, Ohio now honors my permit? When did that happen?
Interesting. I had no idea Washington had reciprocity with anyone. Turns out my CCL is honoured in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin.
(I don’t actually carry a firearm. I just have a permit to do if I want to. Makes purchases easier.)
If you look carefully, you’ll note that all of those states honor everybody’s permits. I mention this because Washington does not recognize any state’s permits other than their own, and a few of them (Arizona, Vermont, Alaska, Arkansas and Kansas) require no permit at all for anybody, resident or not.
“Duck Dinner”?