Weapons and The Law Module

Weapons Laws 018

What is an FFL Transfer?

Generally, Federal law allows for private parties to engage in non commercial gun sales to other private parties in their own state. This means if you have a gun sitting around you don’t want anymore, you usually can just sell it to another person face to face as long as that person isn’t prohibited from owning a gun. Some states have laws that prevent that, and you can’t sell guns across state lines without using a dealer, or a handgun to an out of state resident. Sometimes there are other limitations, but these are the broad aspects of it. But if you bought a gun from an online source, or out of state, or your state doesn’t allow private sales, you need to do an FFL transfer. This means getting an FFL dealer to run a background check on you, and any other state requirements just like if they were the ones selling you the gun in the first place . So you’ve bought that gun. Great! But you need to transfer it. What’s next? Well you’ll need to find an FFL Dealer close to you. If you are a regular at a favorite gun store, you are halfway there. You might want to call around your area and ask who has the lowest price for a transfer. Usually they run about $20-30, but higher prices are not unheard of, and multiple guns may come with different price structures. If you are doing a local private party transfer, you can usually just walk in during business hours, unless the store advertises otherwise. But if you are getting a gun shipped to you, you’ll need to do a few different things both out of good manners and to make things easier all around. How Do You Do an FFL Transfer?