Once upon a time, you could order a gun through the Sears catalog and have it mailed to your door. Contrary to much of the political rhetoric you may have heard, that’s no longer the case. In fact, it hasn’t been since 1968, when the Gun Control Act mandated the requirement for a Federal Firearms License (FFL) to transfer firearms. Essentially, one had to acquire the license to “deal” in firearms, and the licensee would act as a gatekeeper between manufacturers and the general public.
Many collectors acquired the license and used it to transfer firearms to friends and other collectors. That was, until Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center decided he didn’t like that. Among several of his odious initiatives, he successfully badgered the Clinton administration into wiping out non-profit, or “kitchen table,” FFL’s in the 1990’s. Since then, common wisdom was that the ATF would not issue a Type 1 FFL to anybody who was not “engaged in the business” of selling firearms for a profit. Continued...