Question regarding holding a handgun for someone

[sleev-les]

Look, if person A pays for the firearm and person B receives it, that is allowed, that's a gift as the source of the money doesn't matter. The question on the 4473 is are you the actual transferee, which yes, he is. As long as the intention is not to allow person A to avoid the paperwork/FFL transfer. If person B later decides to transfer the firearm to person A, but goes through an FFL, that is NOT a straw purchase as they have complied with the NICS check. A straw purchase cannot occur with an FFL and a NICS check, it just can't.

Mark

This.. Got my g/f a handgun for christmas, BUT, I went to On Target, got her a gift certificate. She went in, did the paperwork and went through the required process and she picked it up and took ownership. Gun stays with her. Point being, it was my money that got it, which isn't the question being asked on the form.

 

[Biggfoot44]

Since on this fine board , we speak only on what is legal , and not what is unlikely to get cought , there is no reason to discuss the near zero rate of prosecution of blatent classic straw purchases.

There is frequent postulation that if each step of a process is legal on its face seperately , then the whole endevor is atuomatically and unequiviovlly legal overall. Not quite.

It's been a while since it's been high profile , but at one point ATF was looking hard at the threashold between " occasional buy & sell for actual shooting and collecting purposes " vs "being dealer w/o Lic " . Each individual transaction may have been 100% legal in itself. There wasn't , and still isn't an objective number of tansactions to distinguish between private person , and unliscensed dlr. All came down to Intentand percieved patterns.

There was a class of people in a Catch-22 where they were in danger of being considered dealing w/o Lic , yet at same time were not business- like enough to qualify for an 001FFL .. The C&R FFL was created to at least partialy address this.

As to situations as variants of the one here ( which have been commonly discussed here ) if any of the participants were to make a statement to Trooper/ Spec Agent to the effect of : Hey that was really for other guy/ me , and (middle guy) was just doing a favor to help out " then that is waving an investagative red flag.

 

[smdub]

Why not get power of attorney from your brother? Works for signing any other legal form so should be the same w/ a FFL? Then seller could ship to the MD FFL, you sign forms for your brother, wait 60+days, and pick up for your brother. He is legal owner.

 

[Merlin]

Probability would be near zero, but here in MD, if he got pulled over with the weapon in the car on the way to or from the range, they would know that he doesn't have any regulated firearms... and then the questions would begin... How do you think it would go with say, the Rockville PD?

I'm not going to recommend that to anyone. If he wants to do that, well, that's a different story. We also had a pending bill in which a loan lasting more than 7 days became an illegal transfer.

So I made a conservative recommendation to someone who clearly doesn't yet know the law or the issues. There is no chance of getting him in trouble that way.

Right, but woulda, shoulda, coulda. I bet no one here has ever been pulled over and if they did the gun they had was never investigated to see if they were the owner. Driving to the range and getting pulled over is not like getting caught shoplifting with a gun on you.

Some time ago I was coming from a gun shop after buying some reloading supplies right after a trap shoot I went to, and I had my shotgun laying on the back seat of my car when I was involved in an accident where someone ran into the back of me, then driving my car into the car in front of me.

About 5 Baltimore County LEO's came to work the seen. One was doing the report thing and a few were directing traffic. And one was just board and was just hanging out it seemed. As I was waiting for all of the report writing to complete the one LEO saw my shotgun laying across the back seat of my car. He did ask me if that was my shotgun. I told him that is was and then I asked him, "It's OK laying their right?" He told me, "I do not know". And that was the end of the shotgun conversation.

So I'm trying to point out that if your just pulled over because you ran a stop sign or was driving to fast, and a LEO saw that you had a gun on the seat next to you being transported the required way, the LEO is not going to detain you as he runs SN's on the gun to gets to the bottom of whether this is truly your gun or not. For one reason there is not a law that says when transporting a gun the required way that you have to be the owner of that gun. I would never recommend loaning guns to anyone, but you can assume your NOT loaning your gun to a prohibited person.

And if the gun has not been reported stolen it will not show as being stolen. If the LEO asks if that is your gun, just say no, it belongs to my brother and I driving to the range to get some shooting in. End of story.

They do not call the CIS team out every time they do a traffic stop or see a gun.

 

[Vile Shadow]

I don't understand why this discussion is talking about straw purchases. This isn't even close to what a straw purchase is. If the gun is going through multiple parties WITHOUT an FFL it is a straw purchase, if there is an FFL involved at each transfer, completely legal, not even close to a straw purchase. If you want to hold the gun for your brother for a year, you MUST get it shipped to your FFL (yes, YOU will be the owner of it, not your brother) and wait for the not disapproved (your brother may be home by this time anyway). THEN when he gets back, you transfer it through an FFL to him and he becomes the owner. No straw purchasing, everyone is getting their background checks. Stop reading into it so much, he's not circumventing the background check, which is what a straw purchase is.

Right. What he's describing isn't a damn straw purchase.

If the OP buys a handgun from a guy in AZ through a dealer here, it legally becomes HIS gun. When his brother returns from deployment in however much time, he and the OP can take the gun to the MSP barracks and do a gift transfer.

Perfectly legal. No laws or background checks were circumvented at any level. Nothing to worry about.