Today, 08:58 AM #15
Skans
Senior Member
Join Date: November 20, 2008
Posts: 3,601 You can do a Trust, but don't think that this is without risk. For now, Trusts are just fine. The trustee of the Trust gets to have possession of the gun and, I suppose has authority to actually shoot it.
Here's the problem I see with Trusts. Warning - I'm the "odd-man-out" in my views here, so let me be up front about that. Ask yourself this - "what is the purpose of the Trust"? Well, it could be for many things - investment, protection of assets, inheritance purposes, and some others. But, one thing that all Trustees are historically forbidden from doing is "wasting the assets" that are in that trust.
For example, in a non-NFA trust, If the maker of the trust puts his collection of rare valuable cars in a Trust, a successor Trustee will not typically be permitted to drive those cars around when they are being held for the benefit of others. The Trustee, as custodian for those cars, is required to do everything he can to care for and preserve their values.
Now, there is a very big difference between a trust for holding an NFA item and typical trusts used for other reasons. With an NFA trust, the person setting up the trust never actually owned what he is placing into the trust. So, it makes the "trustee" look even more like someone who really has no valid reason for shooting NFA items for kicks and giggles. So, what does this mean? In my opinion, the BATFE at any time can simply declare that all NFA items held in trusts can no longer be used by the trustee of the trust. All it would take is a few noisy CLEO's and a director of BATFE with a sympathetic ear for this to happen.
For example, lets say that Liberal-Town, Florida elected an ultra-liberal Sheriff who hates private ownership of guns, and really hates machine guns. This CLEO campaigns on on the fact that he won't sign-off on Form 4's like the last Sheriff did. But, owning a machine gun is the new status symbol in Liberal Town. G-man gun range located in Liberal Town decides to permit full-auto weapons to shoot there. Biff and Biff's 50 friends decide they want machine guns, use trusts because they know the Sheriff won't sign, and as trustees take they guns to the range twice a week for some good fun. Liberal-Sheriff doesn't like this and gets a bunch of other like-Minded Sheriff's to beg the director of BATFE to put a stop to machine-gun owners being able to end-run TopDog Sheriff of Liberal-Town. I think you can figure out the rest.
The morals to this story:
1. When too many people make use of a "loophole" (I know, that term is debatable), guns and bruised egos are involved, bad things happen.
2. Who you elect as Sheriff really should matter to you.
3. If you don't have to use a Trust, then don't use it. If you do have to use a Trust, you better know the potential downside and be prepared for it.