I've been trying to find the law in the RCW that says that a citizen of the US who is a new resident to Washington must wait 90 days before purchasing a firearm from an FFL. I've not had any luck finding it myself by searching the RCW, and FFL dealers don't seem to know where I can find that code, just that it exists.
So I happened to be driving past a police station and I thought maybe I'll stop in and see if they knew. They took a while and in the mean time I was chatting with the friendly officer working the front desk. At some point I brought up Federal law banning private sales between residents of different states without the use of an FFL as a facilitator (for background check).
She began to tell me that no such law exists and she can as a citizen sell to "anybody I want, anywhere, without an FFL involved". I clarified to make sure she was talking about selling to a resident of another state, and she said the exact same thing. I assured her that I had in fact read the code multiple times the previous day and verified this with a community of people who cite the codes of state and federal laws to answer questions.
Now I'm not writing this post to encourage the notion that police officers believe themselves to be above the law, or that they're incompetent in any way. But this experience was, for me, an excellent education of the fact that just because somebody enforces the law, doesn't know they remember every law or have even read them all. Similarly, just because somebody in a forum answers your question doesn't mean they are right. Make sure you follow the law to the source (ATF website, RCW website, etc), read the law for yourself and make sure you understand it.
I think that most of the more experienced individuals in the forum already know what I'm talking about, and have made such comments in the past but heads up for you new guys. DO YOUR HOMEWORK, because not knowing, or even saying that "A police officer told me that..." won't do much good for you after the fact.
Here's a fairly good list of firearm laws on the ATF's website:
http://www.atf.gov/firearms/faq/faq2.htm
Though you may not easily find what you're looking for, here's the RCW's:
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.41
So I happened to be driving past a police station and I thought maybe I'll stop in and see if they knew. They took a while and in the mean time I was chatting with the friendly officer working the front desk. At some point I brought up Federal law banning private sales between residents of different states without the use of an FFL as a facilitator (for background check).
She began to tell me that no such law exists and she can as a citizen sell to "anybody I want, anywhere, without an FFL involved". I clarified to make sure she was talking about selling to a resident of another state, and she said the exact same thing. I assured her that I had in fact read the code multiple times the previous day and verified this with a community of people who cite the codes of state and federal laws to answer questions.
Now I'm not writing this post to encourage the notion that police officers believe themselves to be above the law, or that they're incompetent in any way. But this experience was, for me, an excellent education of the fact that just because somebody enforces the law, doesn't know they remember every law or have even read them all. Similarly, just because somebody in a forum answers your question doesn't mean they are right. Make sure you follow the law to the source (ATF website, RCW website, etc), read the law for yourself and make sure you understand it.
I think that most of the more experienced individuals in the forum already know what I'm talking about, and have made such comments in the past but heads up for you new guys. DO YOUR HOMEWORK, because not knowing, or even saying that "A police officer told me that..." won't do much good for you after the fact.
Here's a fairly good list of firearm laws on the ATF's website:
http://www.atf.gov/firearms/faq/faq2.htm
Though you may not easily find what you're looking for, here's the RCW's:
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.41
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