ATF visit over multiple purchase.

How does a young student with no income buy those guns in that short time? Was he making straw purchases for an income? Who did he sell them to? Was he planning on selling them all and then doing it again?

I would think a "poor student" would have scrimped and saved, and would have thought about his purchase so many times, that he would be happy to keep the gun or guns for a long time. Of course if his parents gave him the money and he bought them on a whim....

I don't think we, or the OP really know the whole story. He let them in, but could have denied them entry. It would not take long for them to get a warrant....maybe already had one but didn't use it because he cooperated. They would have wanted to look in the house to confirm his story.

As has been said, his 'rights' were not violated. I think he did the right thing personally. I'm glad that at least some flagged situations get checked out. If this situation had been straw sales, maybe some killings would have been avoided, who knows?
 
All quality and relatively expensive semi-auto handguns and rifles.
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Those are actually the type of guns going south through legal channels in the US. High dollar 1911s and such BBQ guns are big as gifts in Latin America. No organization pays $1000 for a semi-auto rifle to arm a foot soldier when $100 full auto surplus AKs are widely available in near unlimited numbers from countries already involved in the drug trade. Or when one can simply walk into a government armory and take whatever is wanted for free.
The cartels have tens of thousands of employees. They aren't arming them primarily with straw purchases in the US. They buy shipping containers of arms.
 
Living in a free state with a CCW avoids all that unpleasantry. You simply fill out the 4473 present DL, CCW and $$$; everybody's happy.
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WRONG...a CCW has zero bearing on the FFL's requirement to fill out a mtpl sale form and submit it to the BATF.

The fact is that if a single person buys more then 1 gun in a 5 day period...the FFL holder MUST fill out a separate form and mail it to the BATF.
 
He bought them using his pay from work (since all his other expenses are covered) and credit cards with higher limits. He explained that to the agents. He also had a newer, expensive vehicle that the agents saw and likely added credence to his situation, but who knows. I don't think they had a warrant otherwise they probably would have used it right away or possibly came back at a later time. What probable cause would there possibly be for a situation such as this?

They don't have to write it down. The FFL already submitted the required report of multiple purchases, and you can probably be assured those forms remain in a BATFE database somewhere.
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I see, guess there's not much we can do about that.

I suppose it's not that big of a deal because they're only purchase records. Not something that explicitly says Johnny Citizen has has X and Y firearms in his possession.
 
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It certainly did happen. Merely seeking advice from those who are more experienced with this sort of thing. Nothing crazy happened, just questions and such. They were cool overall. They inspected the weapons he showed them. They wrote stuff down during the conversation. In the end, they shook hands and left. And they haven't been back since.

I understand the skepticism, but I hope you guys can understand this actually did happen. No reason for me to make it up. Just seeking advice.
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I am not going to get into the if its true or not thing. But if the agents were going to do anything they would have done it by now. I doubt the guy has anything to worry about. If he hasn't broke the law and is not known to the cops as a trouble maker the ATF will look for somewhere else to investigate.
 
I'm a little puzzled as to how (or even if) the agents knew he had a "lack of documented income."
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If he put his SSN on the form or they looked it up they could probably look at tax returns and employer quarterly or monthly reporting.

EDIT: As a student he could also have received fairly large payments that were above the cost of school for living and other expenses from federal or private loans. Those might not show up as income for a period of time.
 
I also agree there is a possibility the FFL gave them a heads up about his concerns and they just made some feasible comment in order to keep the source of their tip out of it.
 
He also had a newer, expensive vehicle that the agents saw and likely added credence to his situation,
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The "expensive vehicle" only adds credence to the possibility that the guy is involved in some kind of not-too-legal activity. Particularly for young 20 somethings who need jobs and credit cards to buy things. Notice, I used the word "possibility".

Of course, there are always trust-fund babies; but they don't need to max out their credit card or get jobs to buy things.
 
I've heard of this stuff happening before, and it happened to an acquaintance of mine. In his case, they wanted to "inspect" his NFA items to ensure "everything was on the up-and-up."

Nope. No way. The ATF has no special powers above what other law enforcement have. If they knock on my door without a warrant, they are fishing, and I'm not letting them in my house.

Who knows what could be misinterpreted and turned into reasonable suspicion? I have several books written in Kufic, and quite a bit focusing on middle-eastern history. My browser history probably has queries like, "ISIS recruiting techniques" and "Americans joining ISIS." Somewhere in the basement, I've got copies of the Turner Diaries and the Anarchist's Cookbook.

Given the ATF's track record of harassment and violence, I'm not giving them ammunition to draw weird and possibly dangerous conclusions. If they'd like, they can wait in their car while I contact the local sheriff, and he can boot them from my property.

To reiterate: no warrant, no entry. It doesn't matter what agency it is. You can (and often should) say no to government agents.
 
inspect" his NFA items to ensure "everything was on the up-and-up
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Why not just tell them to sit in the driveway and you will be glad to bring out the NFA item, cased, for them to inspect on the hood of their car? That's what I would do. It wouldn't be hard to verify that they are BATFE agents. If they know what NFA item they want to look at, there's no chance they are scammers looking to steal my gun when I bring it out to them to examine.

In fact, what would the point be of not letting them examine my NFA item outside of my house?
 
Who knows what could be misinterpreted and turned into reasonable suspicion?
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I think many innocent gun owners who have nothing to hide would be concerned about this. He let them in and had a bunch of gun cleaning stuff, boxes of ammo, bore cleaning snake and a used target all in plain sight which the agents saw. Who knows what conclusion they could have come to based on seeing those things. All innocent items that most gun owners have in their homes, could possibly be interpreted as something less than innocent.

They asked several seemingly innocent questions and he gave them 100% innocent answers including telling them he sold or trades some of the guns he bought, which they wrote down. Could they have used that info to get a search warrant or use it against him in the future? I'd like to think no reasonable judge would think so.
 
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This thread makes me sad...........

Sinatra_Gunz1
.....Their stated reason for the visit was his relatively younger age (lower-mid 20s) and lack of documented income.
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ATF would have no way of knowing whether a buyer has any income. Someone isn't telling the entire story.


Is this kind of visit common in border states? What may be the result of such a visit? Does he have anything else to worry about or can he simply rest easy now that it's been over a month?
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Its uncommon, but not rare. I've had dozens of customers who had 2-5 handguns on a multiple sale form.....NONE have received a visit from ATF. The guys with ten Berettas?.......they were there the next afternoon. I believe the only customer who had a negative experience was served with a cease and desist letter (meaning he could not dispose of firearms except to an FFL) He was wearing an ankle monitor last I heard.





MarkCO Call me suspicious, but I would have to see the search warrant to believe this even happened.
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Uh, you do know this wasn't a search right?:rolleyes:
Contrary to popular belief, law enforcement can knock on your door anytime of day just to ask "what time is it?":D




UncleEd On multiple buys within a week, it's the law that the dealer is to report the sales to the ATF.
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Anytime you acquire two or more handguns from the same dealer in any five business day period. The business days are the dealers business days...so it could be less than a full week, or if the dealer is only open Sat/Sun it would encompass several weeks between the first handgun and the second.




Sinatra_Gunz1 Not making any of this up. I don't see why people would think that. There was no search warrant, there was no coercion on the part of the agents. They were polite and simply asked to see the firearms said mutual friend purchased. He let them in and they processed to ask him questions about the purchases and a few other questions.
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I believe you (except for the documented income comment) Every one of my customers who has received a visit for a multiple sale has reported the ATF agents as very polite.




MarkCO BATF does NOT show up to someones house without a warrant. Did not happen.
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Pardon me, your ignorance is showing.:rolleyes:
Heck, just last year I had three ATF inspectors sitting at my dining table.....four hours a night for three nights.:eek:





Mike38 Old news for me. I knew first hand the BATF was keeping instant check info permanently,
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Here's some new "news"....that would be difficult considering the FBI conducts the background check and ATF has nothing to do with it.





4D5 Living in a free state with a CCW avoids all that unpleasantry.
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You are wholly and completely wrong....a CCW/CHL/LTC/etc has absolutely nothing to do with the dealer reporting the Multiple Sale of a handgun.
 
ATF would have no way of knowing whether a buyer has any income. Someone isn't telling the entire story.
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The whole story was told, sir. They may have made a guess. They may have asked someone at the FFL where he worked, etc. They could have looked up his tax returns somehow. No reason to make it up.

It's uncommon, but not rare. I've had dozens of customers who had 2-5 handguns on a multiple sale form.....NONE have received a visit from ATF. The guys with ten Berettas?.......they were there the next afternoon. I believe the only customer who had a negative experience was served with a cease and desist letter (meaning he could not dispose of firearms except to an FFL) He was wearing an ankle monitor last I heard.
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What was the ceast a desist letter for? How did they determine that he was engaging in the business, just for buying a bunch of guns?
 
Sinatra_Gunz1
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ATF would have no way of knowing whether a buyer has any income. Someone isn't telling the entire story.
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The whole story was told, sir. They may have made a guess. They may have asked someone at the FFL where he worked, etc. They could have looked up his tax returns somehow. No reason to make it up.
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I'm not saying YOU aren't telling the whole story....its the friend of a friend.
If ATF is looking at your "friend of a friends" tax returns, then he's got more to worry about than buying two handguns on the same day.

A single Multiple Sale of Handgun form rarely results in a visit from ATF.......they would have multiple thousands of people to check on. I fax in at least four multiple sale forms every week. The only ones to get a visit were picking up eight or more at once.

(and in case anyone wonders who would pick up several handguns all at once?.......guys who travel for a living and deployed military)



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It's uncommon, but not rare. I've had dozens of customers who had 2-5 handguns on a multiple sale form.....NONE have received a visit from ATF. The guys with ten Berettas?.......they were there the next afternoon. I believe the only customer who had a negative experience was served with a cease and desist letter (meaning he could not dispose of firearms except to an FFL) He was wearing an ankle monitor last I heard.
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What was the ceast a desist letter for? How did they determine that he was engaging in the business, just for buying a bunch of guns?
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He got on the radar for buying four Hungarian AMD 65's and four Glocks in the same week (he told me they were for bug out bags for his wife, daughter and son in law). So I had one multiple sale form on the handguns and one on the AK's (only the states bordering Mexico have to report the multiple sale of certain evil rifles).

When ATF came knocking on his door he slammed it in their face and refused to talk to them.....and later called the ATF agent and left somewhat threatening messages on his voice mail. Not real bright.

As luck would have it, about a month later, an AR15 was recovered in Mexico by police. It was traced to a guy in Dallas who told ATF he had sold it to a friend (my customer). My customer told ATF he had sold it at the Dallas Market Hall gun show to a guy with Texas ID.

He agreed to meet the agents at the Plano ATF office where they served him a cease and desist letter. Basically they believed he was engaging in the business of dealing in firearms. He could continue to buy all he wanted....but no more transactions selling or trading to nonlicensees.

Six weeks later he gets caught at a local gun show with someone's gun in his sock. Cops led him out of the show in handcuffs. He's 59years old and had been a fixture at Dallas area gun shows for decades.
 
Mike38 Old news for me. I knew first hand the BATF was keeping instant check info permanently,
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Here's some new "news"....that would be difficult considering the FBI conducts the background check and ATF has nothing to do with it.
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You are correct, it was the FBI that I called to straighten out the mis identity.

My mistake.

I'm not going to rehash what happened to me, regardless of the nay sayers here. I know what happened to me, I was there. :p


The Federal Government keeps records, years and years worth, of gun purchases. They have for quite some time. I don't care if people don't believe it. I don't care if there are laws forbidding it. They do it.
 
They may have made a guess. They may have asked someone at the FFL where he worked, etc. They could have looked up his tax returns somehow.
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One thing we should have learned from the NSA scandals from a few years ago was there was a lot of information being shared between agencies that probably should not have been, or at least was not admissible in court, but was then "back filled" through other investigation techniques so the resulting evidence could be admissible.

The Federal Government keeps records, years and years worth, of gun purchases. They have for quite some time. I don't care if people don't believe it. I don't care if there are laws forbidding it. They do it.
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They might. One of the things that always struck me about those NSA warrantless wiretaps was they could monitor ALL gun shops phones with less legal twisting than they were obviously performing for other things. If they record all those 4473 calls and store them they have the ability to convert to a searchable database very quickly by running a relatively simple parse and convert program on the audio. They aren't FBI or ATFE, the calls could be "related to terrorism" and could easily be stored in a tiny corner of their electronic warehouse. No one except me seemed concerned about this possibility though.
As far as ATFE or FBI directly keeping a database, I believe there are people on our side inside these organizations and in congress keeping their eye out for such activity en mass. As to records of your purchases, they may be. You must also realize they have some ability to track your 4473s if they know which FFLs you use. The FFL keeps the info and will provide it to them without reservation if they have something specific they are looking for(person, serial number,etc).
 
Mike38 ....The Federal Government keeps records, years and years worth, of gun purchases. They have for quite some time. I don't care if people don't believe it. I don't care if there are laws forbidding it. They do it.
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It's no secret and it's perfectly legal. I don't think you really understand what records ATF actually possesses........legally.

Dealers are required to keep their Form 4473's for twenty years...after that we can destroy them. Since those forms take up a considerable amount of storage space, dealers are delighted to toss them in the shredder or fireplace.

When a licensee goes out of business he is required to turn over all of his records (that are less than twenty years old) to ATF National Tracing Center.

They go into a shipping container in the parking lot at ATF in Martinsburg, WV. When ATF needs to trace a firearm they contact the manufacturer>distributor>dealer who then faxes in the Form 4473 for the first retail sale of that gun. ATF will try to contact that original buyer to find out who he gifted/sold/traded the firearm to. If the original buyer doesn't remember......the trace is over.

If the dealer is out of business, then an ATF clerk gets to take a flashlight into the shipping container and look for that original Form 4473.

Here's an interesting story on the NTC and firearm traces:http://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763/the-low-tech-way-guns-get-traced
 
johnwilliamson062 They might. One of the things that always struck me about those NSA warrantless wiretaps was they could monitor ALL gun shops phones with less legal twisting than they were obviously performing for other things. If they record all those 4473 calls and store them they have the ability to convert to a searchable database very quickly by running a relatively simple parse and convert program on the audio.
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Which would tell them what exactly?:rolleyes:
I'll tell you: Buyers name and personal info and whether he bought a handgun, long gun or other firearm. That's it.

They don't get told if it was a revolver, a rifle or AR lower. They don't get told what caliber, they don't even get the manufacturers name much less the serial number.

As a matter of fact an FBI NICS check doesn't mean the buyer was actually transferred that firearm.
 
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