That's 54 guns in 41 months. Or 1.3 guns per month. 1 gun/month does not a dealer make. If I needed to raise some quick $$$ and sold everything I bought just in the past 12 months, my rate would be 2-3x that. Would I be considered a dealer then?
Sounds like trumped up chicken$hit charges to me. I hate the BATF. Very much.
Let me start by saying I don't agree with the laws... If anything, this case is a yet another graphic reason why most federal gun laws should be repealed outright.
That said, within the framework of the existing laws, if you look at the indictment it had little to do with the amount as much as it did the context of many of the transactions. This guy basically waved a red flag around in front of the bull, unfortunately for him. If even a quarter of what is in the indictment is true at all, it's readily apparent that he was intending on operating as a dealer on a for profit basis. You can't do things like order a gun for somebody, take cash up front for it, and still claim that you're not a dealer, among other things. The ATF has a term for this, called "Profit Motive". It would certainly appear that he had that. (EG, intending to run a business involved in selling firearms).
Kevlar said:
Yup. That, and his 2 sets of books...
I think therein lies part of his problem. If he's not a licensed dealer, what the heck is he doing
keeping a transaction log if he's not legally required to under such a circumstance? The mere
presence of the logs, raises more questions than answers, and gives them another thing to
gripe about.
-Mike