More on the BATFE regulations

Here’s an update on one of the topics I talked about in last week’s column. A federal judge has issued a stay on enforcing the BATFE regulation scheduled to take effect on May 31st. This regulation would have required any private person wishing to sell a firearm to another private party to hold a federal firearms license and perform a background check before the firearm could be legally sold and/or transferred.

About twenty-one or more states’ attorney generals have filed a lawsuit against the BATFE alleging government overreach with this action and that the regulation is unconstitutional. The thinking on this is that the BATFE doesn’t have the authority to issue such a regulation. That would fall in Congress’ pervue to pass such a law. Further, if Congress had intended the requirement of having a federal firearms license to even sell one firearm to a family member, for example, they would have included that requirement in the laws regulating federal firearms licensees. No such requirement exists.

If this regulation is upheld in court, it will effectively eliminate the ability for a private citizen to sell a firearm to another private citizen unless they go through an established FFL dealer or get their own federal firearms license, which could take months of waiting time and incurs a significant cost. This is what would be involved in trying to sell only one firearm. Violating this regulation would result in fines and possible prison time.

The time factor in applying for and receiving a federal firearms license would be unbelievable, based on my recent experience in renewing my own FFL. I have held an FFL for the better part of forty years. The licenses are issued for a three-year period and must be renewed before they expire if the licensee plans to continue in the business. I have never had any trouble renewing my license each time until this last renewal.

I always tried to apply for the renewal at least six to eight weeks before the current license was due to expire and usually received the renewed license withing a month or so of my renewal application submission. This last time, following the same time period of application, I heard nothing about the renewal. Finally, as time ticked off, I received a letter of authorization which allowed me to continue doing business for a brief period after the original license expired, which happened within a couple of weeks from receipt of the letter.

I waited for another four months or so and was facing the expiration of the original letter of authorization and called the BATFE agent in Anchorage who had performed the last inspection of my records and other things associated with my license. I asked him if he could help get whatever the hangup was straightened out with the bureaucrats charged with doing the license renewal.

He made a phone call to Washington, D.C. and spoke with the person responsible. Three or four weeks later, my renewed license showed up in the mail. I emailed the agent and thanked him for his help. All my dealings, to date, with the BATFE staff in Anchorage have been courteous and the folks have all been extremely helpful. The BATFE folks who do field work out of the Anchorage office understand how guns are viewed and used in Alaska and do their best to help dealers perform their required duties. My renewed license kept the same dates of validity (month and date), even though I didn’t get it until almost five months later, but at least I got the license.

I tell this story to give you an idea of what would be coming if everybody who wanted to sell an unneeded or unwanted firearm had to have a federal firearms license. We’re talking millions of people caught up in this. Calling in to do a background check to sell or transfer a firearm would increase by a factor of ten or twenty times on any given day once this regulation took effect.

On that note, in my previous forty years of doing background checks as required, I rarely got a “delay” and only once, got a “deny” for the individual being researched. All the “delay” initial responses were changed to “proceed” after a period of time. In my last four transfers, I’ve gotten two “delay” responses, both for folks I know may have never even gotten a traffic ticket.

It would appear there’s a concerted effort to make acquiring a firearm exceedingly difficult today.