Doug,
don't worry about getting anyone mad at you for stating your position in a civilized way for discussion only. I personally appreciated your point.
So far in this discussion I have seen some confusion regarding a dealers license (FFL), a collectors license (C&R) and an individual selling a few or many guns. There are advantages and disadvantages to each position. Forgive me for getting a bit off topic in my second posting from what the original post was about. I guess that I was responsible for straying with my second posting here.
(1) A dealers license allows a person to sell any gun to any person providing the buyer lives in a state that legally allows the ownership of that weapon and that the buyer can pass a background check by the FBI. Sales of multiple guns to the same individual must be reported to the FBI. All sales and purchases must be logged in a book. There are other restictions and requirements but I am deliberately trying to make this brief and not to write a long novel.
Essentially, the FFL allows the holder to sell a Glock, Luger and other weapons within the USA and across state borders. This individual is a business person and is in it to make a profit upon which he must pay taxes.
(2) A C&R holder is a person who can also sell legal weapons within the USA and across state borders. However, the weapons must be within the BATF's book of approved weapons. So while Lugers is in that approval book, a Glock is not. While a C&R holder must log in his book weapons bought and sold across state borders, they are not required to get a background check. A C&R allows the holder to BUY approved weapons from an individual in another state who does not have a C&R or is not a dealer with an FFL license but he can not SELL a weapon to that individual. Generally, a C&R holder is considered a collector or hobbiest. While a C&R holder may make a profit on his sale, he is not considered to be in the gun business. Again, I am desperately trying to make this discussion brief. Tough to do on this topic.
(3) An individual who buys or sells guns without either a C&R or a FFL can't BUY a weapon of any kind from non licensed seller from another state. Since different states have different gun laws, I will have to be careful here. He can SELL a weapon to a dealer from another state, but he can only SELL approved weapons to a C&R holder.
The point of the original post by tigger643 on this thread is what constitutes multiple weapons to the degree that the sales by either a C&R holder or individual is a dealer who makes their living at selling weapons or if that person is a hobbiest. One unnamed BATF jerk in the article written by Tom Knox said that the sale of two weapons constitutes a dealer while another unnamed BATF jerk said five weapons was enough. I consider both of those positions outrageous. Nobody in America is going to consider the profit from the sale of either two or even five guns to come close to a living wage. We are talking pocket change here.
I cannot disagree with Jim's point about overzealous new recuits at the BATF or any other agent or officer be they federal or local. The people involved in the federal obscenities that Tom Knox wrote about were not new recuits. These were experienced, very well paid, heads of departments. As a businessman, I have often found that "following the dollar" often gave me truth. These BATF heads of department are just trying to make a splash to justify their budgetary requirements as they see them. Woe be it to our country if the crimes mentioned in Tom Knox's writing are the worst they could find. It kinda reminds me of Ruby Ridge where one sawed off shotgun caused the deaths of a teenager, his dog and a mother holding a baby as well as serious injury to two men to speak nothing of big time taxpayers money.
If memory serves me right, one victim of this official policy of gun owner harassment by the BATF was a 76 year old guy who has reached an age that he felt that it was time in his life to sell off his personal collection. While my facts may or be correct, my point of discussion is. This does not make him a dealer. It just makes him an intelligent person who realizes that his time has come.
While the BATF's position that each case must be viewed on a case by case basis is good if it is based in some sort of humane basis, I think that the BATF's unwillingness to give a realistic guideline on the number and kind of gun sales that constitute the difference between a for-profit dealer and a hobbiest is wrong. Tom Knox's writing is a fine example of a fuzziness of law that leaves innocent people vulnerable with expensive, legal protection by lawyers becoming the only recourse for its victims. The arrogent BATF heads of departments suffer nothing. This legal fuzziness and the seriousness of its punishment leads me to wonder if the law itself is legal.
I am sorry for the length of this post. I really did try to keep it brief. I had a lot more to write and believe me when I say that I erased a lot to cut it down.
Big Norm
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