Going after the FFLs

I have a relationship with my LGS. The owner knows me. I’ve been buying firearms from him for about 15 or so years now.

When I walk into the shop I’m greeted by name. All of the workers know me by name as well. They all have a good idea of the types of firearms I’m interested in.

The last time I was in he showed me a Winchester saddle carbine in some long dead caliber. It was absolutely beautiful. It was made in the late 1800’s. And he handed it to me to handle. After taking it out of the display case that says “Not for sale.”

Yep, he has a case of beautiful collectable firearms that he is displaying.

At one point you could buy a cannon from him.

If I decide to purchase a firearm from him, he smiles, takes my cash, hands me a 4473 and a pen and waits for me to finish filling it out. It gets typed into the computer or phoned/faxed in. And then we wait.

There is no chance in hell that he would let me walk out the door with the gun I just purchased without the approval from NICS.

But he is under increasing pressure from the ATF.

Last year when I went in there were a couple of dudes sitting in the middle of the store at a table with the bound books. For the couple of weeks they were there he made very few sales. It was an ATF inspection.

In years past he let them work in the back room. Today they are required to be under constant observation. He caught them taking pictures of his bound books. That is when they were moved out of the backroom.

The number of FFLs that have had their licenses denied or revoked is up 500+% from last year. There are a number of articles and YouTube videos talking about people losing their livelihoods because the ATF inspectors have a zero-tolerance policy. What use to be “hey, you have a paperwork error, please fix it” now seems to be turning into a loss of license.

Keith Ellison, the AG for MN, is doing the same thing. Attacking FFLs.

People are going into Fleet Farm retailers. Filling out the 4473s. Getting “proceed” responses from NICS. Walking out the door with their newly purchased firearm.

Keith is suing four Fleet Farm retailers in civil court because they didn’t go above the requirements of the law.

The state alleges that the company knew it was selling to straw purchasers or should have known because buyers exhibited red flags such as buying many handguns at once, making multiple purchases in short periods of time and purchasing at multiple Fleet Farms stores to evade reporting requirements.

See, the FFL, having used the best resource the state could provide him, didn’t intuit that the purchaser was doing a straw purchase.

It seems that one person, Jerome Horton, Jr, purchased two dozen firearms over four months from 4 different stores. Atleast according to a federal affidavit.

So the dude bought 1 or 2 guns a month from each store (4 * 4 * 1 = 16, 4 * 4 * 2 = 32). I’ve been known to buy more than two guns a month for a couple of months. I certainly haven’t sold them to anybody else.

What we are seeing is an increase of lawfare to attack the Lawful Commerce in Arms. Over and over again we see this happening. Even Mexico is doing it. Suing gun companies because the gun companies sold a legal product legally to people that they were told by the government were legally allowed to own those products.