Showing posts with label 4473. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4473. Show all posts

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Just so you know.

This may seem a little elementary to many of you but there is some misinformation out there about what the federal government knows about your guns and I thought I would throw this out in light of all the recent talk of a possible federal  gun registration.  

As of right now there is no way the federal government can go to a computer and pull up a list of your weapons regardless of where they were purchased and unless you live in a locale which requires you to register them like NY City for example no other government agency can either.
We all know private party purchases are fairly untraceable but some are unaware of what happens when you fill out a form 4473 to purchase from a firearms dealer.
When you fill out a 4473 it is background check to see if you are legally able to purchase and it does contain the serial number but when the gun store calls in to the State to get approval the State is NOT given the serial number and the form is NOT sent anywhere, it is filed at the gun shop and is required to be kept there. So here is how it works if that gun shows up in a crime. Lets say police recover a Smith & Wesson gun at a crime scene, the authorities go to S&W and ask for records of who they sold that gun to. They may say it was delivered to ABC wholesale in Atlanta, they then go to ABC and ask who they sold it to and they may have sold it to XYZ Guns in Houston Texas. When the authorities go to XYZ they go to their file cabinet and pull out the form and see you bought the gun......Busted.....However if for example you said "I needed rent money last month and sold it at a gun show" the trail is lost unless you happen to know who you sold it to. Furthermore you are not required to keep a record of that and everything is totally legal.
It is not legal to purchase a gun with the intent to walk out the door and resell it but you are totally legal if your car broke down the next day and you had to sell the gun it to get your car fixed.
I only mention this because people are afraid to buy from a dealer because the think someone is keeping a list. I myself prefer to buy private but if I find what I want I am quite comfortable doing so from a dealer as well and over the years I have bought and traded many times.

So to recap, if there is a gun ban or if you are required to register all your guns and if for example the government could dig enough to get a list of guns you have bought in the last 20 years (an almost impossible task for one individual let alone millions I may add) and if they were to stand at your door with that list and ask why did you not register them you could shrug you shoulders and say  "I'm sorry, I sold them all privately because I did not want the hassle of all this registration" then all is golden, just don't get caught lying about it that would not be cool and we all want to be cool.
Now that I think about it I might start selling my guns because I don't want the hassle either.