You are happy to throw Abramski under the bus because "he violated federal law," but another U.S. Circuit Court held, in another case, that because the person for whom the firearm was being purchased would have passed a NICS check the purchaser had made no criminal misrepresentation.
And, as you noted, 4 of the 9 U.S. Supreme Court believed that Abramski did not commit any crime.
So I am not content to throw Abramski under the bus. Just because you buy a firearm intending to sell it to another person should NOT mean that it is a "strawman" transaction. The warning on the 4473 was against buying the firearm "on behalf of" the other person. I don't believe Abramski bought "on behalf of" his uncle,
because his plan was to transfer it to the uncle only if the uncle could pass a NICS check, which was, in fact, done.
If the two Obama appointees, Kagan and Sotomayor, had not been on the court, Abramski's conviction would have been overturned. The four dissenters needed only one more justice to join them.
You bring the fact that Abramski was arrested for a bank robbery. But the charges were dropped, so, so what?
And as far as Trump's ATF vs. Obama's, well, Trump's never did anything remotely as bad as Fast & Furious, which was an out-and-out attempt to get A/R's banned.
But, to the main point, the government, in order to get conviction, does not have to "cite a statute" saying you cannot add Responsible Persons after a stamp has been issued. They merely need to point to the applicable CFR, which says:
§ 479.84. Application to transfer
(a) General. Except as otherwise provided in this subpart, no firearm may be transferred in the United States unless an application, Form 4 (5320.4), Application for Tax Paid Transfer and Registration of Firearm, in duplicate, executed under the penalties of perjury, to transfer the firearm and register it to the transferee has been filed with and approved by the Director. The application shall be filed by the transferor. If the transferee is not a licensed manufacturer, importer, or dealer qualified under this part and is a partnership, company (including a Limited Liability Company (LLC)), association, trust, or corporation, all information on the Form 4 application shall be furnished for each responsible person of the transferee.
The government will argue that "for each responsible person of the transferee" mean exactly that, and irrespective of when they become a responsible person. They will argue there was no Form 4 submitted for your later-added RP, so there was a violation. They will argue the fact that AFT will not allow later Form 4's to be filed is immaterial.
The burden to show that later added RP's are somehow
exempt will be on the defendant, not the other way around. And nowhere in the CFR's or in the Federal Register discussing the proposed 2016 changes (which can be read here:
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-01-15/pdf/2016-00192.pdf ) is it even hinted that later added RP's will be exempt.
The clearly stated purpose of the 41F changes was to require all RP's to have to undergo a background check. Letting a trust circumvent that by adding RP's immediately after the stamp is issued is highly likely to get shot down if this issue is ever before a judge.
Believe me, I wish it were otherwise. I do not believe there should be any more restrictions on suppressors that there are on long guns. In other words, any person who can pass a NICS check should be able to walk into gunshop in America and walk out with all the suppressors he can afford.
I just do not want to see my fellow patriots going to prison because they listened to people who did not know what they were talking about, and who in their zeal to make another sale told people what they wanted to hear.