I hear you. All else being equal, somebody would have to be nuts to WANT or PREFER to fill out a 4473. Only reason I don’t like face to face is the potential for crazy.

I’m surprised many of you prefer the paperwork stuff. Not me.

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
I hear you. All else being equal, somebody would have to be nuts to WANT or PREFER to fill out a 4473. Only reason I don’t like face to face is the potential for crazy.

I’m surprised many of you prefer the paperwork stuff. Not me.

I'm also surprise, or more accurately, amazed that someone would prefer paperwork. I guess freedom is scary stuff.

1) 4473s are retained by the dealer for the life of the business and are not sent to the ATF until or unless the business closes. Only then, they are sent to ATF so that the records can still be accessed as part of a trace. The records are scanned but must be scanned in a format that does not permit optical character recognition.

One psuedo-exception are multiple sale forms. Those are completed when buying more than one handgun in five consecutive business days. Those are sent to ATF and the county sheriff.

2) Race and ethnicity (and sex, height, and weight) are likely collected in large part to help sort through NICS responses. There are a lot of people out there with the same or similar names, a lot that have given multiple names when arrested, etc. If you have ever sifted through somebody's criminal history, you have seen the amount of sometimes obviously garbage data in them.

In Louisiana , boating accidents MUST be reported to the State within 5 days ..

quote:

Originally posted by DaBigBR:
1) 4473s are retained by the dealer for the life of the business and are not sent to the ATF until or unless the business closes. Only then, they are sent to ATF so that the records can still be accessed as part of a trace. The records are scanned but must be scanned in a format that does not permit optical character recognition…

I may or may not be a conspiracy theorist, but I am lacking the confidence that our government will faithfully follow any such self imposed limitations…

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:

quote:

Originally posted by pedropcola:
I hear you. All else being equal, somebody would have to be nuts to WANT or PREFER to fill out a 4473. Only reason I don’t like face to face is the potential for crazy.

I’m surprised many of you prefer the paperwork stuff. Not me.

I'm also surprise, or more accurately, amazed that someone would prefer paperwork. I guess freedom is scary stuff.

Who prefers the paperwork stuff? Nobody on this thread has said they prefer filling out a 4473 as a buyer. The OP obviously prefers it to private sales, but he’s a FFL so of course he’s going to want people to buy from him instead of buying somewhere else. He certainly doesn’t qualify as “many”.

Other than that nobody has said they prefer paperwork. Most of us just don’t seem to care.

The only arguments I can see to preferring a dealer are safety, people do get robbed doing FTF transactions, or because you are afraid of being scammed. I take precautions when meeting FTF which usually means bringing a friend and always means a public place during the day, and I know enough about guns and how to judge their condition to get screwed over too badly, but I have heard horror stories from people who are as knowledgeable as me or more and have still been screwed. I doubt many people prefer the paperwork part as much as they prefer the feeling of security from buying at a dealer.

quote:

Originally posted by 911Boss:

quote:

Originally posted by DaBigBR:
1) 4473s are retained by the dealer for the life of the business and are not sent to the ATF until or unless the business closes. Only then, they are sent to ATF so that the records can still be accessed as part of a trace. The records are scanned but must be scanned in a format that does not permit optical character recognition…

I may or may not be a conspiracy theorist, but I am lacking the confidence that our government will faithfully follow any such self imposed limitations…

Well, I'm with you there. My guess is that the "special format" was designed with a means to toggle it on and off and be recoverable at some future point. As I said in my earlier post, I doubt that 4473s would be the only means to compile the door kick list. Any and all traces of interest in firearms could be used to justify probable cause if we get that far down the road to liberal hell. The search warrant isn't going to specify looking for a certain firearm by serial number. It would include everything and the house would get torn apart.