I suppose I already know the answer here, so maybe just a rant. :)

I'm an 07/02, not a dealer in any way, not open to public, don't do transfers, can't recall if I've ever signed up for NICS, don't want randos coming into my home, and sure don't want to get tangled up in any NICS refusals if any, etc.

But! This week, UPS comes to my house while I'm away in Europe: apparently some guy that lives four hours away from me ordered a rifle from one of the online superstores and (I guess) randomly picked my FFL to be his receiving in-state dealer. Not sure why he chose me, seeing as there's lots of retail gun shops closer to him.

He never called prior to ordering to see if I even do transfers, find out my business hours, transfer charges, etc. For that matter, he still hasn't contacted me prior or after. Just a mystery box shows up.
I could have refused shipment with UPS, but now it's here and has to be logged in and then out again.

I'll probably give the guy the benefit of the doubt, do the friendliest thing I can: Not charge him for my time, drive the rifle down to a local retail shop that does cheap transfers, log it out to that shop, and advise guy to pick it up there. I'm still doing a bunch of paper-and-legwork for free, but... Shrug.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll call the online dealer that allowed him to ship to me and ask them to remove my FFL from their "ok to ship to" list that I assume they have. Which got me to thinking - is there any way to do this globally? There's got to be dozens of the online marts that just load/link to the ATF FFL list, which seems to be just asking for problems. Giving some dude the option to send their firearm to a lot of places that don't provide that service ("Oh, I'll ship this Ruger 1022 to... lessee, General Dynamics! They've got an FFL and sound nice! I'm sure they'll be open to me walking up to their facility!")

I'm sure a lot of y'all have colorful stories about mystery guns showing up on their doorstep.

Advertise $1000 transfer fee to keep them away :)

Rants are good.




He could learn an expensive lesson.




I hate the mystery box.

Contact seller. Tell them you dont do transfers and to send you a return label.



If it was a pistol with an arm brace and no Form 3 or Form 4 what would you do?
Seriously, thats another thread.



If you charge him $100 for your time he'll join Arfcom just to bitch about you.



No, you can't remove yourself from the ATF FFL list. That list isn't valid for shipping firearms.

That means if you didn't send that seller a copy of your FFL.....he's in violation of federal law.

Ha! It was honestly my first thought that somewhere, some dude is going to be ranting about me on a forum about a "deadbeat FFL that won't give him his gun" once he finds out we aren't set up to do retail transfers.  :)

Weirdness continues though:

This morning, I called the online store that sent it. Asked them how they sent it to my address without them having a certified copy of our FFL on file. They claimed that the rifle was bought on Gunbroker, and Gunbroker provided my FFL to them. (Can Gunbroker even do that? Provide a certified copy of someone else's FFL?)

Added to the weirdness, I don't believe I've ever sent Gunbroker a copy of my FFL: I wrote them to check on that, but for certain I have never bought or sold there under this license.

So I went to Gunbroker's "Find a Federal Firearms License Dealer Near You" page and searched for dealers within 5 miles of my zipcode. Guess what? My FFL does not come up at all. Certainly doesn't come up with their "FFL on file" red icon denoting a preferred dealer. It's not like random-guy just selected my FFL from a drop-down list of all the state's FFLs or something that could easily be explained or excused.

Someone took significant steps of extra work to get this rifle to my address, which, again, is a 4-hour drive from random-guy's house.

I do not know how random-guy that ordered this rifle got our information, or how it was given to Gunbroker, nor how Gunbroker got it to the online store that sent the rifle to me, or in general how this rifle was legally shipped to us. I'm looking into it in an abundance of caution. I sent a request to Gunbroker asking if they just use EZ-Check, or how they do business. The paranoid in me can't help but think that (since I'm involved in some totally unrelated pro-2A legislation) this coincidental stuff shouldn't happen.

Who's the online retailer the customer purchased from? That would go along way considering it's likely someone is familiar with their processes / procedures / or get's firearms shipped to them from that merchant.

I can't recall ever receiving a firearm from somebody whom didn't have our FFL on file prior to us listing it on our website for download.

Hell, I still get "Contact Us" form submissions from our website that are just people asking for our FFL.

If they managed to click about 3/4" of an inch lower than the button to contact us, they'd see a big old one that says "Download our FFL".

Sure, but only if you uploaded a copy marked "For Shipment Only. No Face to Face Transfers."



Someone isn't telling you the truth.





GunBroker will just host an image of your FFL if you upload it. They do not verify the validity....thats the responsibility of the seller.

The continued story solves the mystery: the online store called me this evening, this conversation was a bit more humble and apologetic.  :)

Turns out they were supposed to ship it to a totally different FFL – one in the same city as random-guy – and somehow scrambled me into the mix. Not sure how that happened, but it's all on their end, and they're sorry this happened. They're sending a call tag for the return and a copy of their FFL so I can properly log it out.