As Alanint suggested, Class III firearm ownership does not open you to ANY level of premises inspection different than that arising from ordinary firearms ownership. And that is zero inspection without probable cause. In my case, the issue has not even arisen in 40 years.
As for refused CLEO signatures, I'm not an advocate of going the trust or corporate routes. One area man did so (already had a corporation for his business), and all went fine, until a few years later when he had to dissolve the corporation, in the course of selling the business, and he wanted to transfer his corporation owned SMG to himself. The local antigun sheriff fought him tooth and nail, again refusing to sign and trying to block alternate signatures. I believe the sheriff eventually lost that one.
It is not a foregone conclusion that in all jurisdictions and in all states, if the lowest guy on the totem pole will not sign, collusion will dictate that nobody else will sign either. It doesn't work that way everywhere, although it might at the first local step or two.
There's a more important and unadvertised consideration. ATF (now under Department of Justice) seems not to be at all comfortable with the constitutionality of the CLEO signature requirement. They do not like to see one of these local podunkville arbitrary turn-downs directed against the law abiding resident of a state allowing private Class III ownership. It is very clear that they don't want to see a legal challenge pressed very far, as a loss could throw the whole thing out; looks like they want to see it continue to be used selectively. To try to head off a constitutional confrontation, several years ago at one of our annual collector meetings, they sent two representatives who discussed the issue. They said if you are ever blocked by one of these signature refusers, telephone a certain named individual at ATF headquarters, who was qualified and authorized to deal with the problem and make it go away. They were a bit evasive about how that would work, by persuasion or by waiving the requirement on a case-by-case basis. But it was clear that they wanted us to understand that a firm local "no" did not necessarily mean a binding "no".
So the thought I would leave you with is that if your clean record qualifies you to own one of these restricted items in a state which allows it, and your local defender of his biased personal whim says you can't, and that's that, he is mistaken. If you know where to go to overrule him, you can, with ATF's help, and without lawyers or the filing of corporation papers.
Of course, my information is from before the Obamanables took over, and I have no way of knowing the extent to which they may have further politicized ATF in the last six months. And with a vehemently anti-firearms left wing attorney general running Justice, it may have gone pretty far.
If that turns out to be true, then there's the corporate route, until Obama issues an Executive Order decreeing that, since all corporations and capitalists are basically evil, as Karl Marx has taught us, new U.S. corporations may not be formed after a certain cutoff date. Or maybe I shouldn't be joking about that.
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