One day a week I take a break from my full time job as a stay-at-home-dad to two lovely little girls and run a gun store in a small Indiana town. I also devote roughly half my weekends working gun shows across the northern half of the state. I want to give Kossacks a view of my world behind the counter and the show tables and hopefully dispel some misconceptions about guns, gun laws and gun buyers. I am not necessarily trying to change minds on gun-control, but rather give Kossacks a better understanding of the reality I see every week, because, as the saying goes, "knowing is half the battle!"
"I was gambling in Havana, I took a little risk. Send lawyers, guns and money. Dad, get me out of this!" - Warren Zevon
I like guns. I like them more than I would often like to admit, even to myself. I own quite a few. I am fortunate that working at the shop is a hobby, with the luxury of allowing everything I make to go right back to the store or training. I especially feel fortunate in this economy and in my county, which notoriously, has a 20% unemployment rate.
I started working at the local gun store two years ago, a couple months after it opened a couple of blocks away from my house. I was just getting back into guns after several years uninvolvment. (How a liberal Mennonite kid got into guns in the first place is a whole other story.) I got my foot in the door by offering to build the store's website in exchange for a gun at cost. Well before I had the website built, the owner asked me to start working shows and eventually in the shop and finally run the store on the days I do work. By sales, our store is probably the biggest in the state. People come from as far away as Indianapolis, which is a three hour drive.
I will start by describing the process of buying a gun, in Indiana. The rules differ a bit from state to state. In Indiana, in order to by a gun, a buyer must have a valid photo ID (even the Amish - and yes, they do buy guns), often this is a Drivers License or a state issued ID Card. The buyer must also be a resident of Indiana to buy a handgun or a resident of Indiana or a bordering state to buy a long gun (rifle, shotgun, etc.), city of Chicago and Cook County excluded. The buyer must also have proof of residence; often this is covered by the drivers license, but if the license is not up to date, a government document is needed proving the buyer's current address. Vehicle registration, a tax document, a county library card all work. The buyer must be at least 21 y.o. to buy a handgun, rifle lower receiver, and, in Indiana, a shotgun that has a pistol grip and no butt stock. Buyers of long guns must be at least 18 y.o..
Indiana also allows the sale of National Firearms Act (NFA) weapons. Also known as Class III weapons, because items in this category require a Class III Federal Firearms License (FFL) to sell. These include fully automatic weapons (machine guns), silencers, short barrel rifles (SBR), short barrel shotguns (SBS), Any-Other Weapons (AOW) and certain Destructive Devices. I may go into this later as most people do not buy these items and purchasing them requires a much more involved and lengthy process.
So, it all starts when a buyer walks into my shop and wants to buy a gun or guns. Assuming the buyer meets the above mentioned criteria, I must be reasonably certain that the gun(s) they intend to buy are for themselves and that the buyer does not intend to resell the gun(s). This is the most stressful and perilous part of the gun store employee's/owner's job, at least it ought to be. This is the realm of the "straw purchase". A straw purchase is when one person buys a gun on behalf of another person who is not legally allowed to possess a gun, either because the person is under age, has done something to forfeit their right, or are not a resident of a qualifying state or a US citizen.
Unfortunately, what constitutes a straw purchase is not clear cut. The ATF 4473 Form, which I will get to soon, lays out what a straw purchase is and what it is not. The trap comes though in that there is quite a substantial gray area between what is and what is not. What my store owner quickly found is that, like most legal writing, there is room for interpretation.
Every Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder has an ATF compliance officer which is available to answer questions regarding ATF regulations. Our compliance officer told the store owner that while the 4473 states that, for example, a person may buy a gun on behalf of another family member, or that guns may be bought as gifts, our compliance officer says that it is not that simple and may constitute a straw purchase and thus a violation depending on the details of the situation. So, to get specific, if I sell a gun to a man who is buying it for his wife to keep at home while he is away on business trips, that is fine. However, if that woman turns out to have been a convicted felon, and thus prohibited from possession of a firearm (or even residing in a home with one present) a straw purchase was just transacted and both my customer and I are liable.
Since it is the FFL's legal obligation to know his/her customers, the smart thing for the gun dealer to do is to sell guns to only those people who he/she is confident are buy the gun(s) for themselves. A women may come in to buy a gun for her husband for his birthday, we will not sell her the gun even though we may believe her story and the 4473 says its not a straw purchase. Instead we will sell a gift certificate. The most common scenario is that I will be talking to a customer for a few minutes about a particular gun and he will say something along the lines of how he has been looking for this specific gun and yada yada. Then he will make an off-hand comment, sometimes to a buddy, about how the gun is for his wife, at which point I will announce that I cannot sell the gun to him and that he should bring his wife in to buy it. This is often meet with confusion by the formerly potential buyer. I know that most of these women are probably saints and probably aren't that interested on having the gun, and despite what the 4473 says, it is not worth the risk to make the sale.
Another thing we have to be very careful about is who pays for the gun. We do not accept credit cards that are not the buyer's, it doesn't matter if it is the buyer's wife's card. We will not take cash from friends who are loaning some money. Sure, if a person is $10 short, not problem, but otherwise, no deal.
So what is a 4473? The 4473 (the linked example is an old form and slightly different) is the background check. After the buyer has met age, ID and residency requirements and I am confident that it is not a straw purchase, the buyer must submit to a background check, more properly know as an FBI National Instant Criminal Search, or NICS, pronounced "nicks". The buyer fills out his/her basic info, being careful not to abbreviate, write legibly, not in cursive and in black ink. Answer 12 questions correctly (my favorite is "Are you a fugitive from justice?") and sign and date. The sales person records the type of firearm(s); the photo ID type, number and expiration date; the current date; the make, model, serial number, type and caliber/gauge of the gun; the number of guns being purchased and whether or not the purchase is part of a pawn transaction. I then call NICS and give our FFL number and password to the operator who then goes down the form and takes the information from me. (Knowing the NATO phonetic alphabet is a plus.) After the operator has the info he/she then gives me what is called a NICS Transaction Number (NTN) and then either a Proceed, Delay, or Denied.
If I get a Proceed, I usually ask for and record the operator's Brady ID number, thank them, and then proceed to box the gun and write up the receipt and ring up the sale. If I get a Delay then the operator gives me a date on which the firearm(s) may be transferred to the buyer, at our discretion, if we do not receive a Proceed before that date. The date is four days later, not counting weekends. A Delay means NICS is doing further research. A Delay only happens after I have been transferred from the operator to an examiner. Often the examiner will give a Proceed, but sometimes a Delay. Delay can be triggered by DUIs, having a very common name and not providing a Social Security number, being on active military duty or, we suspect, even having a very clean record. NICS never tells us why. As I tell customers, NICS could call us back in an hour, or they might not call us back before the allowed transfer date. If we do not hear from NICS by the transfer date, it is our store's policy to call for a final status. If there is "No Resolution" and we have no reason not to feel ok with the transfer, we proceed with the sale. The owner, btw, has made it very clear that any one of his staff may decline a sale for any reason and if we need to quite literally tell someone to "get the fuck out of the store" we should not hesitate.
If a person is Denied, well then, too damn bad. Most people who are denied fill out the 4473 knowing they will be denied or weren't sure but are not surprised, though they may fain confusion or surprise. Some people know they will be denied but go through the process hoping to find a dealer stupid enough to sell the gun anyway. People who really don't know why they are denied can make an appeal to NICS and if they really are clean will be issued a Unique Personal Identification Number (UPIN). Occasionally, I meet a person with a UPIN.
If you are a dealer and you are not careful about how you do business you are an idiot and you will get caught. Let me tell you, there are lots of idiots out there and they get caught. The number of FFLs has dropped significant in the last decade. I can't quickly find the exact numbers, but in 1993 there were close to 250,000 licensed dealers in the US. Now there are roughly less than 10% of that. After the Assault Weapons Ban was passed in 1994 the ATF cracked down and pulled a lot of licenses. The agency also disallowed what amounted to "home" FFLs, people who had FFLs simply to save money on buying guns for themselves and friends. A dealer must now have a minimal amount of hours that they are open for business and the ATF really prefers a separate premises for doing business.
Undercover ATF agents attend gun shows and check in on stores by attempting to make illegal purchases. I know they have been in the store on days I work, the owner and his wife have spotted some. (One was an Asian man with an attempt at a Chinese accent that was so bad that the owner's wife outright asked if he was ATF. He turned red and literally ran out of the store. Poor newbie.) I am certain local ATF know me and everyone else who works our shop.
Since entering the business four years ago, the owner has seen at least half a dozen Indiana FFLs go out of business, either through forced license forfeiture, arrest, suicide or simply not making it. It is a rough business, especially if you are not careful.
Our shop has done extremely well, even in what was an increasing hard market. Gun and ammunition prices were going up well before the election and the industry changed drastically with online business and gun auction sites. Customers are now able to shop around; if your prices are on average $200 more then someone five states away or two counties away, people find out and gladly pay the additional shipping and transfer fee or time and gas to drive. Guns no longer sold themselves, dealers and their staff can no longer get away with being grumpy, apathetic or arrogant jerks, yet a lot of dealers remain that way. Our business thrived because it was started by someone who was tired of being treated poorly by a big local store. Everyone who works at our shop started out as a customer in front of other dealer's counters. Its amazing what simple courtesy will achieve. The business is also very well run. We have the best prices because the owner buys in large quantities and isn't greedy about his profit margin. We have run other dealers out of business and we have done it all while operating above board.
So that is summary of what is required to sell guns as an FFL in Indiana. I could go on an on about gun laws, and concealed carry laws, and interstate transfers, etc. One of my favorite parts of working in gun sales is educating people. If there is further interest I will write Part II on gun shows, private party sales and the gray market. I can also write about customers and gun culture as I experience it and further about what constitutes semi-automatic weapons and NFA weapons and law enforcement/military weapons and how gun-control relates to each of those categories.