When I lived in NY and had my FFL the State Police handled FFL "stuff" They frowned upon us taking in handguns from private parties but when queried they told me it wasn't illegal, that they just "frowned upon it". No explanation why and to be honest I never talked to anyone when I called that really seemed to know exactly what their policies were. When it came up I received them in because they never told me I couldn't.

Now in Florida I have a few handguns I'd sell. I haven't found an FFL yet but I know from past experience that between shipping and transfer fees it's often not worth selling and shipping through an FFL. It looks like ship my gun makes it possible for me to ship myself and at a discounted rate, so I ask,

Do the forum FFL's or members FFL's take in handguns from private individuals?

Mine doesn’t because they have had issues with individuals not including the required info needed for their book. I'm sure I could find one who does if I looked around.

I use Pawn Shop Guy for FFL stuff. He does accept handguns from individuals if a Driver License is provided.

I have two local FFL's in Montana who do. They require a copy of the shippers VALID drivers license.

We do accept from private party. However, I will say more often then not we get a firearm in with no info. No photo copy of DL and no receiving party info. Sometimes, the return address isn't even readable.

quote:

Do the forum FFL's or members FFL's take in handguns from private individuals?

When I had an FFL, I took had no issues taking handgun from a private individual. But I know many FFLs who won't so you need to look around.

As a side note, I'm looking to clear out some handguns (don't have a FFL anymore) and looked into using Ship My Gun. Seems like a lot of UPS Customer Care centers have shut down, making it more difficult to find a UPS place that will accept a handgun for shipment. Make sure you look into that.

Here is my understanding of the “Why” from a buddy who ran a brick & mortar FFL:

Say they take a transfer from an individual, but the receiving individual, for whatever reason, is ineligible to take possession. What does the FFL then do with the gun? They can’t ship it back to the original sender, so it is stuck in limbo and turns into a headache the FFL simply doesn’t want.

quote:

Originally posted by rkentm:
Here is my understanding of the “Why” from a buddy who ran a brick & mortar FFL:

Say they take a transfer from an individual, but the receiving individual, for whatever reason, is ineligible to take possession. What does the FFL then do with the gun? They can’t ship it back to the original sender, so it is stuck in limbo and turns into a headache the FFL simply doesn’t want.

Has it been that way for a long time, or has that changed in the last several years?

Back when UPS & FedEx didn’t have policies against private parties shipping I several times sent handguns to the volcano base in Spray, Oregon via UPS. GGI completed the work and sent the pistols back to me via UPS. At that time I had no FFL. I’m pretty sure that the 03 FFL that I now have would be irrelevant for this purpose, but I didn’t even have that then. And this was with me in Kommiefornia and GGI in Oregon.

He means "frowned on" as in if you do it, we will pull your state license and you'll be out of business."

NYSP, we can enforce anything we want, law or not.

I do, if they do not add their info I just use what was in the label and ask the buyer the sellers name.

Mine does and always has.

I'll accept a gun from a non-FFL if I have his/her DL. If the buyer can't complete the transfer, the gun stays with me. I don't want to keep other people's guns, but the seller obviously isn't going to ship without getting paid first. So if he's willing to refund the buyer's money if he can't complete the transfer and someone is going to reimburse for shipping, I'll do it. Otherwise, gun stay with me. The last ATF IOI who came to visit told me a story about an FFL who wanted to keep the gun for himself and simply refused to transfer the gun to the buyer. ATF said it was a civil matter and they wouldn't get involved.

The 2 FFLs I use here in Vegas will not accept shipment or transfers from Individual. They require it to he sent via FFL from the sender’s end.

It seems like ship my gun isn’t a great option. Per their website shipments have to go to a UPS hub and I don’t have one locally. The one I had in Buffalo closed their counter service before I left and from what I’m seeing online a lot of them are shutting down their walk in service.

quote:

Originally posted by rkentm:
Here is my understanding of the “Why” from a buddy who ran a brick & mortar FFL:

Say they take a transfer from an individual, but the receiving individual, for whatever reason, is ineligible to take possession. What does the FFL then do with the gun? They can’t ship it back to the original sender, so it is stuck in limbo and turns into a headache the FFL simply doesn’t want.

Why do you think they can’t ship it back to the sender? I know that an FFL can return a gun to an individual that was shipped to the FFL by that individual. It happens all the time for repairs and refinishing. I have personally shipped guns to Sig which were returned to me personally, and I have shipped guns to CCR for refinishing that were returned to me personally.

I DON’T know if there is an exception for repairs, but I think that it’s just that it’s that original person’s gun, so it can be shipped to him without going through an FFL. Similarly, you can ship a gun to yourself.

The two I use in our area do not accept handgun shipments from individuals. One of them used to several years ago but stopped.

quote:

Originally posted by rkentm:
Here is my understanding of the “Why” from a buddy who ran a brick & mortar FFL:

Say they take a transfer from an individual, but the receiving individual, for whatever reason, is ineligible to take possession. What does the FFL then do with the gun? They can’t ship it back to the original sender, so it is stuck in limbo and turns into a headache the FFL simply doesn’t want.

All the FFL needs to do is check the state laws and set a policy for “abandoned” firearms. Once that time frame is past, the firearm is now owned by the FFL.

When I first started I was having people leave their firearms for weeks and I was limited on space in the safe. I cannot recall now, but I set a time of like 6 weeks. Once I put out that policy, I never had another issue.

Let someone leave it with me, I like free guns…..

Lots of repair shops have signs on the wall about 30 days to pay before storage fees start and/or the shop can sell the "abandoned" item. I rent office space for my FFL from a guitar and amp repair shop. Every time I walk in there, I ask if anyone has stiffed them and what they want to sell. I know I will score big one of these days.

I had an out of state customer ask me to store a couple gums for him, he was moving back to NY and it took about a year to get a permit at the time. Seven and a half years went by and in that time I tried to contact him several times. I was turning in my FFL so I sold his guns off before I did. About a year later he popped up and sent the police because he wanted his guns. I told the PD what happened and never heard from anyone again.

10-20 years ago, seems like most/all of the gun shops in my area would accept shipments from individuals.

Nowadays, few to none will. (And there are about 1/3 of the number of gun shops and pawn shops as there were before too!)

The reason I've been given by several dealers is that they're concerned about/tired of being stuck in dubious possession of a firearm that was shipped in to them but they can't officially log into their bound books because the individual shipper didn't include their info and has since gone radio silent.