Quote History Quoted:
Compliance inspections occur yearly or 'every few years' depending on the type of FFL and your location. Areas with a large number of FFLs don't have enough ATF IOIs (Industry Operations Investigators) to do frequent inspections.
One of the things they look at is the previous 12 months of 4473s. They're looking for mistakes on the forms and will address what they find during the inspection review with the FFL. What other information they gather from that inspection process may never be passed on to the FFL. If a customer's pattern of behavior catches their attention, they could, and have, investigated further.
FFLs maintain the 4473s for 20 years and then destroy them. If the FFL closes business before that 20 year mark, and they're shipped to ATF's West Virginia facility.
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Dad passed in 2011, I ran the license as a Successor until it expired, then had to clean up and close out what was left,
maybe 4 months after the FFL expired we were done, and the IOI/Compliance guy that was helping me picked up all the 4473's,
I also gave them all the copies of the form 4's we had processed over the years (that ended up being helpful for another deceased FFL later)
anyway,
about a year goes by, and I have had a new FFL for a short while,
get a call from the tracing center, wanting a trace on something that was sold,
when we get to the details and dates I told the nice lady I could not help her,
she did not like that answer and got a bit short, telling me who she was, requirements to comply etc etc,
I told her I understood all that and would be happy to comply, however that trace request would be on the old license that had expired, and that all the paperwork was loaded in the back of a Gov Sedan maybe 3 months prior, and taken to the local office ,,,,,
she suddenly became very nice again, and said she was going to call the local branch,,,and find out why they had not forwarded the paperwork,,,