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Online purchase of an item, although a purchase of an item at a store would be the same now that I am writing this, and it is in "jail" awaiting the NFA approval process to happen.

What would happen if the place your item is at goes out of business?
1) How would one get their item?
2) Would you have to pay more fees?
2a)The $200 government tax, no.
2b)Would there be another Form3 fee to transfer to another location? Who pays that?

Any thought on this HYPOTHETICAL?
 
This might be best answered by the ATF as I imagine they'd be involved with the enforcement of the codes pertaining to it. I've actually personally known people this happened to... two different times. WA and OR.
 
I've never (knock on wood) had it happen personally. A couple observations:
  1. I am semi-active on an NFA-focused forum in which this has happened to some people. The ones I recall, the buyer had a "oh my God!" moment when realizing their FFL/SOT was out of business, called the ATF, and said agency fast tracked the F4 through because an unlicensed individual (former owner of shop) with the item was bad juju.
  2. I had a compliance inspection in 2009 for my 03FFL. During that, the compliance inspector got a phone call, apologized that he had to take it, spoke for a while with the person and hung up. He apologized again and said he normally doesn't take cell calls during an inspection, but this particular person had a "warehouse full of explosives in eastern Oregon", gave up his license, and then went on vacation before getting rid of his stuff. Apparently the Portland office of ATF was not amused at the idea of a non-licensed guy doing that and wanted him to either transfer it to another licensee or hand it over for destruction ASAP.
Are those two observations typical? No idea, but it might give some idea of what could happen.
 
I once had a similar conversation with a guy that has a large machine gun collection and he told me he once purchased a Thompson sub machine gun from an older man, and when the tax stamp finally came back from the ATF, he went over to the mans home to pick it up and found out the man had suddenly died the month before.
He contacted his son and inquired about where the Thompson was being stored and got the run around.
The son claimed that he had taken his dads firearms collection, but there wasn't any machine guns, only hunting rifles and pistols.
His next course of action was to contact the local Sheriffs office and file a grand theft report and he then rode along with a couple of deputies to the sons house and after a few minutes of some serious explanations about the Federal laws pertaining to machine guns and search warrants, the son suddenly remembered where it might be found.
 
I've personally had this happen with THREE different vendors. So I'll answer the questions in order as best I can.

What would happen if the place your item is at goes out of business?
1) How would one get their item?
Most of the time, this is still handled by the FFL without extra hassle. Typically, even if they go out of business for some reason, they can keep their FFL license active until they have transferred out their remaining inventory. Mail forwarding will still get the NFA-stamp to their correct address, and they let you know it has shown up. The ATF is actually fairly helpful and understanding with this.

2) Would you have to pay more fees?
Depends. Technically at this point, it would be a face-to-face transfer that still needs to happen at an SOT to process the NICS. One time I was charged this from the new FFL, one time I was not out of courtesy of problems the initial FFL had (much longer story there).

2a)The $200 government tax, no.
2b)Would there be another Form3 fee to transfer to another location? Who pays that?
There would not be another Form 3 necessary. Unless you happened to move states in that time frame.
 
The ATF is very good at working with dealers in situations like this. I have a very close friend that recently is a dealer and moved from OK to OR and the ATF approved all of his pending transfers in a couple weeks so he could complete his transfers and move. He had a couple of very lucky customers.
 
I once had a similar conversation with a guy that has a large machine gun collection and he told me he once purchased a Thompson sub machine gun from an older man, and when the tax stamp finally came back from the ATF, he went over to the mans home to pick it up and found out the man had suddenly died the month before.
He contacted his son and inquired about where the Thompson was being stored and got the run around.
The son claimed that he had taken his dads firearms collection, but there wasn't any machine guns, only hunting rifles and pistols.
His next course of action was to contact the local Sheriffs office and file a grand theft report and he then rode along with a couple of deputies to the sons house and after a few minutes of some serious explanations about the Federal laws pertaining to machine guns and search warrants, the son suddenly remembered where it might be found.

Not to derail the thread, but this is one partial reason why I don't get any NFA items (I am still considering a suppressor); I am 63 years old this summer and if I expire my child inherits everything. I don't want her to have to deal with NFA items or the government.
 
Not to derail the thread, but this is one partial reason why I don't get any NFA items (I am still considering a suppressor); I am 63 years old this summer and if I expire my child inherits everything. I don't want her to have to deal with NFA items or the government.
I'm not quite that old, but when I do kick off, my son will get any guns I have at the time. He's looking forward to that. All the NFA items transfer tax free on a form 5, unless I sell them before then and buy a new vehicle.
 
My NFA trust is set up in such a way as it lays out exactly who gets control of what if I was to drop dead. It's set up so there are no questions and several people who can possess the items with no additional paperwork (if they need to be stored while getting them to my boys)

Of course this only works in a free state like Idaho, out of luck if you are in Washington
 

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