Do You Want to Become a Licensed Firearms dealer? If so, You’ll need a Federal Firearms License.

Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 8:46 pm

There a lot of reasons people may choose to get their Federal Firearms Licenses. If you’ve been curious and are interested in obtaining your license, you’ll need to do your homework first. Perhaps you’re a collector that wants to be able to purchase firearms directly. Or maybe you want to become a firearms dealer. In either case, your first step will be to obtain a Federal Firearms License.

Since there are several types of licenses available, you’ll need to decide beforehand what you’re most interested in. The reason for this is that the gun-control act mandated the licensing requirements of individuals or any company that is involved with selling firearms.

There are nine different types of federal firearms licenses available that range from a type I dealer or gunsmith, to a type XI importer of title I firearms, ammunition, and destructive devices.

Add to that three special occupational tax classes that deal with importing, manufacturing, and the selling of NFA (National Firearms Act) firearms, and you can see that it gets very complex very quickly.

So what’s the first step in obtaining your Federal Firearms License? The answer is to do your own due diligence. Knowing what type of firearms license you want is one of the largest stumbling blocks that most people face when attempting to get their license. If you’re just a collector, you’ll be best suited with a C and R license (curios and relics). Whereas if you’re intentions are to become a dealer, then you’ll need to determine what type of dealer and what type of firearms that you are interested in selling.

If your intention is to become a manufacturer, importer, exporter of firearms, NFA destructive devices, or ammunition, then the choice of type of license or tax class gets even more confusing and will require more information. You shouldn’t get overwhelmed by the choices, but you should be prepared to put in some time researching and learning the various laws to determine the license type that’s right for you.