I’m sure most of you’ve heard of the CLEO sign off for individuals going away potentially. Well, that’s good news, but what I didn’t realize until today is that the main purpose (title) of the proposed change is to require each responsible member of a trust of corporation to submit fingerprint cards and photographs. This new regulation hasn’t been adopted yet, but supposedly it’s in the stage of “proposed rule making” so it may only be a matter of time.
The Department of Justice is proposing to amend the regulations of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) regarding the making or transferring of a firearm under the National Firearms Act. The proposed regulations would (1) add a definition for the term “responsible person”; (2) require each responsible person of a corporation, trust or legal entity to complete a specified form, and to submit photographs and fingerprints;
This would be a huge strike against the trust/corporate route and would add time and complexity. I would imagine processing times going up as the rate of paperwork errors should increase when everyone has to submit additional documentation.
Does anyone have more information? This seems to be sneaking under the radar compared to all the AWB talk. I’ve had some items I’ve been meaning to Form 1, and I’m going to do so within the next few weeks so I don’t have to deal with these new potential requirements.
Very clever, incremental and under-the-radar step toward the Feinstein agenda. Regulatory reinterpretation without all of that messy and unpredictable legislative process.
After a quick look, I believe this is the Obama administration’s reg agenda, which is an agenda the administration is supposed to put out twice a year. The administration only issued one last year and it was put this out after the middle of Dec. 2012.
In other words, I think this comes from the document that the administration uses to inform the public about what rules/regs it is planning to propose.
So far, it doesn’t look like they have filed a notice of proposed rulemaking (proposed regulatory change) based on a quick RIN number search (although someone may have other input here) but it looks like they are anticipating doing so no later than July 2013. That said, just because it is listed in their reg agenda doesn’t mean that the agency will actually move forward with it, although there’s no reason to expect DOJ to sit on this one.
Once DOJ posts a NPRM in the federal register the public will have a certain period of time (usually 30-60 days) to file a comment letter. In addition to doing this, the best thing to do would be to send letters to members of Congress who may have oversight of DOJ (thinking House Republicans here). Congress can cut off funding for certain regulatory adventures but its fairly uncommon. Otherwise, you left with trying to persuade the DOJ that the proposed rule (NPRM) isn’t a good idea.
Step 1. Close the trust/corp “loophole”
Step 2. Add all “assault weaopns” to the NFA registry.
Now even private sales will have to transfer on a Form 4, with a $200 tax and months of waiting.
New sales on a basic AR15 will incur a ~8+ month waiting period.
The good news:
Applications by individuals will no longer require their CLEO to sign off. Still requires photographs and fingerprint cards.
The bad news:
Unlike previously, where they were except from this requirement, trusts and corporations will now need to have each “responsible member” submit their photographs and fingerprint cards.
This eliminates most of the perceived benefits of the trust/corporate route. There are still some benefits like being able to have your wife/brother/pet squirrel have access to jointly owned/controlled NFA firearms .
In some jurisdictions it has been either difficult or impossible to get past this first stage in the NFA process because some individuals in authority will not handle this part of their work load. Thus denying the citizen/individual applicant the opportunity to possess an NFA item.
I think these suggested changes come from the folks in the NFA Branch and not the White House, and precede the current frenzy over the Newtown murders. We’ve been hearing rumors about this for many months now.
What they’re essentially doing is making the individual application process and the trust application process the same. Good news for individual applicants, bad news for trust applicants. As has been noted, the other advantages of trust ownership are still there.
You can thank the NFATCA partially for this because they worked with the BATFE on this matter and in fact is was published in one of the issues of SAR.
Right now, the general assumption seems to be that the limited number of NFA examiners is what slows down the NFA process. But I was under the impression that NFA farms the actual background check out to the FBI.
Regardless of the number of new examiners they have added or might add in the future, I would think that adding that many more background and fingerprint checks to the system, trust applicants AND the influx if all “assault weapons” have to be NFA, is going to bog the system down incrementally further. Feinstein’s mention of NFA registration includes more funds for ATF, but it seems to me that, at some point, FBI personnel checking fingerprints and doing background check becomes the major stumbling block.
This new rule COULD be a good thing…but I’ll withhold judgment for now. Let’s look at this from several perspectives. First, consider the existing system for NFA items. I was perfectly happy to go the individual route but my CLEO refused to sign off even though I easily passed many background checks and held very high military security clearances before I retired. So for me the only way I could lawfully own a suppressor was the trust route–which is what I used. I’ve talked to others who were in the same boat. Now consider the issue from the NFA examiner’s perspective. He or she HAS to review your trust to make sure it complies with your state’s law AND all Federal NFA rules. Does that speed up the approval process? I don’t think so. What would speed up the process is a system where the examiner had all the information on you (and your co-trustees and beneficiaries) on file so it could be pulled up and updated by a QUICK background check similar to what is done now when you buy a firearm through an FFL dealer. Will it work this way? I don’t know. If they put more weapons on the NFA list without more resources, then this proposal will stink. If they require you to submit fingerprint cards EACH TIME you submit a Form 1 or 4 it will stink. But for now…rather than being negative…I’ll withhold judgment until I see the entire process. Me: I’m a retired JAG officer.
More burecratic BS; if fingerprints and pictures would help cut transfer times in half, I would say that would be a good thing. But this is just going to bog down transfer times even more.
How is a BATFE examiner going to know if your ‘trust’ is legal?
How about a trust that has trustee’s that live out of state
For a Corp, I know of many that have dozens of people who handle firearms. Security companies that use NFA firearms. So having to list every officer of the corp, every employee who is authorized to handle the firearms, and then all the actual security guards.
How the hell is having everyone of those people having to submit pics and prints going to go over?
Can you imagine a corp purchasing an NFA item, and then having to submit 50 or more sets of pics and prints? Can you imagine how much time that would take?
Insane.
A trust/corp negates the need for that because the trust/corp is NOT an individual, and therefor has no background to check, prints to review, or a face to photograph.
I attended a continuing legal education course for lawyers on “gun trusts.” One of the BATFE staff attorneys was a speaker.
Based on his presentation, each examiner is assigned to a group of co-located states, so they get to know their states’ requirements real well.
The examiners have a check list. As long as they find the items on their checklist in your trust, it is approved. That is not the same as the examiner finding that the trust is valid or proper.
The staff attorneys create the checklists. 26 states have adopted the Uniform Trust Code so the laws from state to state are largely the same. Even the non-code states are not going to dramatically differ.
If an examiner finds something questionable, they pass it to counsels’ office for an opinion.
He mentioned one examiner kept finding the same name used for the residual beneficiary. Apparently, someone made his trust available for copying. A bunch of people changed the creator and trustee but not all the beneficiaries. The applications were approved. But if the trusts are ever fulfilled, there is someone somewhere that is going to receive a truckload of NFA items in the coming years.