I received the following email. I share it here in the hopes of enlightening us all a bit:
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I've never tried to buy a gun this way, so I put it out to you for comment.
My response:
Dear David,
Just a quick question, I hope you can help educate me.
My wife and I went to a gun show today in Austin, TX. I wasn't planning on buying anything big so I only took $120 with me. Then I found a particular model shotgun I've been looking for but unable to find, price $450. My wife (bless her heart) said we could put it on her credit card.
I told the dealer we wanted to purchase it, so he asked for ID. I gave him my driver's license, and my wife took out her credit card. He said, "Sorry, the person who purchases the gun needs to be the one to fill out the paperwork." Fine, my wife said she'd do it. Dealer then said, "No, I can't sell you the gun now because he [meaning me] already said the gun was for him." I actually didn't say "I" wanted
to purchase it, I said "we"; it just so happens that I handed him my driver's license instead of my wife's. I wouldn't say the dealer was being a complete dick, but he was... dick-ish. We just walked away.
I've purchased other guns in the past using my wife's credit card -- one time at a gun show where she filled out the NICS paperwork, another time at a local store where I did the paperwork but they took her card without saying a word. We've been married for 8 years, live at the same address, have the same last names, shoot together... we were simply dumbfounded. I don't have a single credit card in my name, swore off the damn evil things 5 years ago and haven't needed one since (until today, I guess...). The dealer made no effort to try to find a way to accommodate us. He clearly didn't want our business, so he didn't get it.
I understand that the first line on form 4473 is “I am the buyer of this firearm” and the purchaser must answer honestly yes or no in ink, in his or her own handwriting. Our stated intention was to purchase the shotgun for our home. Everything in our home is community property, as any divorce court would maintain, so if my wife answered "yes" on Line 1 she would have been telling the truth. We were not trying to pull one over on the dealer or circumvent the law.
I can also understand that dealers have to cover themselves from the feds who want to put them out of business for typos and punctuation errors on their FFL forms and all.. but was what we were doing in any way improper or illegal?
In the end, this whole episode left a really bad taste in our mouths, to the point where we've agreed never to buy at a gun show again and support our local dealers instead.
Thanks for any advice or insight you might offer.
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I've never tried to buy a gun this way, so I put it out to you for comment.
My response:
Unfortunately, the ATF has become so aggressive on "straw purchasers" that dealers are afraid to do anything that might cause scrutiny. With what Bloomberg did to gun dealers with his Mintz Group "investigative teams" is enough to trigger this type of response. He does not know you and for all he knows, you were antis or undercovers trying to set him up. You could very well encounter this same response in a store.Who has something to add?
Whether or not his fears are legally founded is something I'd have difficulty answering without consulting a knowledgeable attorney, so I can see where he figured the profit he'd make on a $450 sale was not worth taking any risk.