Shall Not Be Questioned

I’ve decided I should make at least one purchase during this panic gun buying season, so I decided to throw down some benjamins and buy TD’s FAL.  Blue Book of Gun Values says the gun is worth $700, but today everything has an Obama Panic Premium (we’ll call it OPP for short) attached to it, so that must be taken into consideration.  But there is one issue.

TD lives in Michigan, and I live in Pennsylvania, which means it’s time to play the “Reasonable Gun Laws” game.  Since TD and I live in different states, we can’t just handle this through a private sale, even though we can both legally posses the rifle in our respective states.  Asked a local FFL about doing the transfer, and got this answer:

We fax or mail our FFL directly to the seller’s dealer and he/she ships the firearm/s with a copy of his/her FFL. That is the only way we do out of state transfers. It costs $50.00 plus tax plus $10.00 for the instant check, totaling $63.00.

So that’s $63 bucks on my side, and another batch of money on TD’s side to pay for the FFL transfer at his end.  Legally speaking, TD can ship direct to my FFL, since non-licensees are permitted to ship through common carrier (though not U.S. Mail if it’s a handgun) to an FFL in any state.  But it’s hard to find an FFL that’s willing to deal with a non-licensee who’s out of state.  Obviously, I’m not paying anyone $63 bucks to receive a package and do 10 minutes of paperwork.  I know another FFL who does them for 32 bucks, so I might try him.

Imagine how hard it’s going to be to find a reasonable deal on transfers when selling a gun to a friend requires it?  Prices in Pennsylvania are already high for transfers, because in this state, there are no private sales of handguns.  If they ban all private sales for all guns, you can expect dealers to jack prices on handling transfers, since it eats into their business.  This is the world the Brady Campaign wants to bring us all, folks.

Looks like the National Association of Park Rangers is also going to file suit to keep the new rule from going into effect.  I have to admit, I’m little miffed at the Bush Administration for not getting this rule change done sooner.  I think the strategy of our opponents is to run the clock out, until they can deal with an administration who won’t fight that hard for the change.  If it can get thrown out on a legal technicality, then that’s it.  There will be no time or desire to rework a different rule.  If the rule change gets reversed, Bush will still have taken media heat for the rule, but we won’t have gotten it.  No one will be happy, except perhaps the Brady Campaign.