LAS VEGAS — The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) insists the agency will enforce President Barack Obama’s new executive actions “on a case by case basis.”
Obama issued several executive actions pertaining to firearms earlier in the month.
The ATF will start enforcing a rule any person selling firearms from a store, a gun shows, or online must have a Federal Firearms License (FFL) and conduct background checks. The administration stressed that there is no “specific threshold number of firearms purchased or sold that triggers the licensure requirement.”
An ATF representative told The Daily Caller at the SHOT Show Tuesday, “It depends on how much you’re doing it and there’s no line. There’s no bright line number.”
He continued, “There’s no number. It’s just going to be a case-by-case basis. So you can have a large gun collection and you sell 20 of them because you’re trying to liquidate your collection and then you go out and buy new ones. You don’t need a license to do that.”
The ATF defines individuals who are “engaged in the business of dealing in firearms” as a person who “devotes time, attention and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms.”
The ATF representative notes, “If you’re trading a gun to a dealer or selling your gun you can do that, but if you’re doing it with the intent of making a profit and making money so you can go buy another gun and sell it, you might run into an area where you might need an FFL.”