What Does the New Gun Law Say About Guns?

I may be wrong, but I believe the only consumer product which requires someone to become a federally-licensed dealer in order to sell that product is a product called a gun. In fact, getting licensed from the federal government to sell guns was the reason that the government enacted its second national gun law in 1938, the first gun law enacted in 1934 defined what kinds of guns could be bought and owned.

The 1938 law required that anyone who wanted to sell guns in some kind of businesslike transaction had to pass a background check and had to keep some kind of record or document which contained the name and address of the customer who bought a gun. When the government then passed the 1968 gun law and designated the ATF to be the agency that would regulate the gun business, that law required the ATF to design the requisite forms that would be used to create documentary proof of purchase, sale and transfer of guns, documents which then were expanded and revised when the feds passed their last gun bill requiring background checks in 1994.

In addition to requiring gun dealers to utilize certain forms to hold information about the movement of guns (A&D Book, Form 4473), the 1968 law also mandated that this information could be verified and validated by the ATF with a visit to each and every gun shop. What was left unchanged in the 1968 and 1994 gun laws, however, was a definition of the word ‘dealer’ which made the ATF’s mission and responsibilities rather vague.