Federal form 4473...what year?

[3006guns]

I was driving home from a friend's house today and a thought suddenly popped into my mind....

Most of us are aware of the 1934 Firearms Act, but when did the form 4473 become mandatory? Seems to me I've been filling one out for any gun purchases prior to GCA '68. Does anyone know the year and if there was any protest, say by the NRA?

I'm curious from an historical perspective. If you think about it, that was the defining moment for Federal control of privately owned firearms.

[twotrees]

Prior to the 1968 act you didn't need any paperwork to buy a long or short arm.
I still have some old ad's from Rifleman mag that could get you anything from a Mauser to a 1911, through the mail.

[shooterg]

Yup. Turned 18 in 1968, ready to start mail ordering guns, and they passed the #$%^ 1968 GCA, WITH the NRA's blessing.

[Adam10mm]

GCA of 1968.

[Adam10mm]

WITH the NRA's blessing.
Not
Really
Allegiant

The NRA is not on the side of gun rights. Oh, yeah, and thanks for endorsing the NFA too. The NRA has done more harm than good.

[firefly1957]

You may have had to fill out paper work to buy a new gun in some states before the gun control act of 1968. After that it was federal I wonder if anyone has figured out how much money such laws have wasted since!!!! and not just to run it but for companies and customers to abide by it also.

[frkelly74]

at least a zillion.

[Artful]

Hey quit your whining, your keeping people employed in the .gov
- just think instead of a local dealer selling to you and having you fill out paper work and calling in to someone at NIC's for background checks and enforcing waiting periods, etc.

- it could be like the old days when you sent you money off to Colt, Winchester, Western Auto, Coast to Coast, Sears, Wards, Bannerman and they just sent you your firearm
- what huge trouble that would cause - slaughters everywhere - people dying in the streets as men just took those rifles and handguns and instantly ran amock - the world world never survive that -


Oh, wait that was the 1850's thru 1968 - scratch that we already survived it - had some bumps in the years when the .gov made drinking illegal making like 60+% of america criminal and driving a thriving blackmarket in booze, but no other real problems that I remember.

Shoot there goes all that typing.

[MtGun44]

In most of the country, buying a gun was like buying a hammer or screwdriver prior to the
GCA of 1968. There was no background check until the Brady Bill came in with a waiting
period (~'93 IIRC)- but the NRA got them to insert 'or an instant background check', so we do not
have a national waiting period. Unfortunately, my worthless, spineless SOB of a Senator,
Bob Dole, talked them into changing the waiting period/background check to cover long
guns when it was originally going to only be on handguns. Thank a butt head RINO Bob
Dole personally for that one.

Look, I have plenty of disagreements with how the NRA works, but if you think that they
are not on the side of gun rights you are just showing how ignorant you are about the
REAL fight for gun rights. It is easy to say stuff like that, but I tell you, after fighting for
12 yrs in KS to get concealed carry, pass preemtion, pass range protection, stop an
assault weapon ban, etc. the NRA was there funding a professional lobbyist, help us
to organize and with a bit of funding. I put out our newsletter statewide for many years,
and they helped us to fund that a few times, too.

I very much disagree with MANY things the the NRA staff does, and how they run the
show, but at the real end of the process - they make a BIG difference in getting real
world changes done. Do they need their feet held to the fire? YES. Do they need us
constantly reminding them to keep heading in the right direction? YES, but they are
very powerful and give shooters a valuable voice in government. Trashing them does
nobody any good except the antigunners that would love to see us all at each others'
throats.

GOA is a great outfit, so are numerious other grassroots gun rights groups, but we neet
the NRA, too. I do not work for them, and they have made me mad MORE than a few
times, but we need to stick together on this fight.

Bill

[ilcop22]

In every conflict resolution scenario, compromise must be made. The N.R.A. has made compromises to pacify the government and the Brady campaign for the greater good. Filling out a few lines on a form isn't the end of the world. You know what we dealers do with those forms? We shove them in a drawer for 10 years in case the feds barge into our private homes or businesses to make sure WE made sure YOU filled them out correctly and that we wrote them down in our R&D book all nice and neat like. I'm comfortable with the background checks because quite frankly, not everyone IS qualified to own a firearm. Unregulated freedom is anarchy, and anarchy is bad. Now you might ask yourself, "where does ilcop22 get off with these opinions?" It's easy. I'm from Illinois. You can't **** in my state without paying a tax, and our constitutional rights are violated on a regular basis. Ever heard of a FOID card? Know how many concealed carry permits we've issued? I rest my case.

[MtGun44]

I agree that not everyone should own a firearm. The problem is that regulating them
at the point of sale has almost nothing to do with who owns firearms and ultimately
is totally pointless, but feels good to the non-thinkers.

Bill

[3006guns]

Ah, yes.......it's coming back to me now. GCA68 did indeed set the rules we have now. Prior to that, I had to fill out STATE paperwork for the purchase of a handgun (none for rifle, had to be 18) and wait three days before pickup (California).

I have a pile of old AR, all with ads showing 1911's going for about forty bucks, Garands for $98.50, etc......but the most interesting catalog I have was from Service Armament Company....which became Sarco......selling various sub machine guns, live artillery pieces, etc.

Oh, for the "good old days......"

[Artful]

In every conflict resolution scenario, compromise must be made.

Check your history man, in many major cultural expansions NO COMPROMISE was made and the winners took the spoils. The Non-Gun culture is taking the freedoms your forefathers fought so hard to earn away from you.:evil: They have the agenda of A,B,C, andD - you give them C to keep A, B and D. And the next year they have agenda of A,B,D you give them D to keep A and B and the next year they have agenda of A, B, E, and G and you give them ... I think you see where it goes. Same philosophy that the indigenous people of china used to handle invaders.

The N.R.A. has made compromises to pacify the government and the Brady campaign for the greater good. And hows that working out?

There was no Brady campaign but was a similar bunch of liberal do-gooders who think they have the right to tell the rest what to do. Look up the "great society" and it's grand plan for it's war on poverty and how all would be sweetness and light after they took your money and gave it too the poor. Same BS on different channel.


Filling out a few lines on a form isn't the end of the world. You know what we dealers do with those forms? We shove them in a drawer for 10 years in case the feds barge into our private homes or businesses to make sure WE made sure YOU filled them out correctly and that we wrote them down in our R&D book all nice and neat like.

And can you think of another fed regulatory agency that does that? Does the FDA, ICC, IRS etc come in like that or do they send you notice to bring your records down to their office on a scheduled day & time?

I'm comfortable with the background checks because quite frankly, not everyone IS qualified to own a firearm.
But I see so many unqualified people with them, how did that happen? What's wrong with the law or society. How does someone like Jared Lee Loughner fall thru your backgound check

Unregulated freedom is anarchy, and anarchy is bad. Now you might ask yourself, "where does ilcop22 get off with these opinions?"

It's easy. I'm from Illinois. You can't **** in my state without paying a tax, and our constitutional rights are violated on a regular basis. Ever heard of a FOID card? Know how many concealed carry permits we've issued? I rest my case.

You need to go to a free state, visit TX, NV, AZ, NM, OR - someplace not gone crazy and get your mind back - or is it too late. Then you can get all the people who control the state "machine" out and sweep clean the state laws and have a free state like some that exist out there.


I agree that not everyone should own a firearm. The problem is that regulating them
at the point of sale has almost nothing to do with who owns firearms and ultimately
is totally pointless, but feels good to the non-thinkers.

Bill

Well said Bill - having lived thru some of the changes, I can say that I have seen regulations come and go and not much good has come of them. I remember filling out forms to buy ammo, did it impact crime - nope, I remember when you could walk up to a vending machine put in money and a card of 22's would come out. Was there anarchy - nope. The firearm is a tool - the problem is the fool - 1st fool is the one they misuses the tool - 2nd fool is the one who thinks he can keep the 1st fool from doing foolish things.

Sorry if I seem to have gone off the deep end, but I find this last 40 plus years of spiraling regulation trying to solve a moral problem just a little much. Especially when you had .gov create a lot of the problems in the first place.

[MtGun44]

The REALLY good news is that we are seriously winning the intellectual argument on the right
to keep and bear arms. In 1910 if you wanted to have a protest march on something that was
not popular, you could easily be just shut down by the local police and that was the end of it.
The 1st Amendment was not thought much of in practical terms. It took a lot of years of legal
work and cases through the Supreme Court to get it to where we are today. IMO, we have
gone well over the edge, but the ACLU can now threaten a lawsuit over a lot of really silly stuff
under the 1st, and politicians listen and react. The 1st Amendment is taken very seriously.

We are just starting down the road to rehabilitate the 2nd Amendment which was essentially
dead since 1934 or so, and was steadily being encroached upon - without any serious push
back. An incredibly important item of note is that in the last 20+ years there have been
somewhere around 50 scholarly articles in the legal journals in this country. This may seem
really irrelevant, but this is where the lawyers, law professors and judges thrash out the
great legal issues. Each side publishes articles defending their views of legal issues. Of
those 50 articles, essentially all of them (minus a few bogus ones) have come down hard
and clear on the side of the 2nd Amendment being an important constitutional right of
individual Americans. In law schools it is difficult to find a prof to support the stupid old
view which is still being sold (somewhat) by the anti-gunners that the 2nd is about the
National Guard's right to exist and have guns, not individuals. In the sense of what is
being taught to lawyers (who will some day be judges) - it is that the 2nd is an important
civil right of individuals and must be taken seriously, and the intent of the founders be
considered when cases are decided.

We have won a couple of HUGE Supreme Court cases, and states and cities have been forced
to recognize gun rights as serious civil rights. We need to take it slowly and steadily, but we
will probably continue to win this fight, and need to do it in the right way to maximize our
future position. Picking the right defendant and the right case to take to court is a critical
choice and must be done properly.

So - as much as things are messed up somewhat, we are headed in the right direction. I
wish it were faster, but our system is what it is and we are using it effectively to roll back
many decades of antigun laws. The fact that many, many people carry firearms all the time
is providing solid, irrefutable proof that the antigunner's claim that more guns equals more
crime is provably wrong.

Maybe one day we will have guns back as totally uncontrolled items, like the founders intended.
I hope that soon, the 4473s and ATF can be relagated to the dustbin of history.

Bill

[LAcaster]

The batfe just sold many wepons to the Mexican Drugloards. Did the Instant back ground check work, NO. The system only works against us the law abiding gun owner. Maybe theres a reason for this, maybe they just can't trust us to not step in ,when they break our Constitution.

[Artful]

Actually the NIC's system thru up a red flag for unauthorized purchase but Federal ATF agents overruled and told the dealers to sell AK47's etc to the gun runners anyway.

http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Opinion/082801-2011-01-28-atf-approved-sales-to-mexican-gun-runners.htm

[462]

ilcop22,
Compromise the Constitution?

Compromise my principles?

Are you serious? Besides, neither have anything to do with "conflict resolution", whatever that means.

[HotGuns]

Leave him alone. He's from the people's republic of Illinois. What do you expect? There is no hope for that state.

[blackthorn]

Artful---I agree with almost everything you said and it applies to my country as well as to yours. The one thing I found to sort of question is your statement that:
"Sorry if I seem to have gone off the deep end, but I find this last 40 plus years of spiraling regulation trying to solve a moral problem just a little much. Especially when you had .gov create a lot of the problems in the first place."

In my opinion, the powers that be (and it includes ALL parties) and their supporters, are simply implementing a (very) long term plan to slowly disarm and thereby gain control of the public as a whole. Firearm laws are not about public safety, they are about despotism or outright dictatorship. Rant off!

[Screwbolts]

do some research, the 4473 is patterned directly from the Nazi form, it went into effect directly after WWII, look up the man how proposed it, he was at the Nuremberg trials and got a copy of it there.

Ken

[fryboy]

I wonder what " shall not be infringed " means ....

[Geezer in NH]

In every conflict resolution scenario, compromise must be made. The N.R.A. has made compromises to pacify the government and the Brady campaign for the greater good. Filling out a few lines on a form isn't the end of the world. You know what we dealers do with those forms? We shove them in a drawer for 10 years in case the feds barge into our private homes or businesses to make sure WE made sure YOU filled them out correctly and that we wrote them down in our R&D book all nice and neat like. I'm comfortable with the background checks because quite frankly, not everyone IS qualified to own a firearm. Unregulated freedom is anarchy, and anarchy is bad. Now you might ask yourself, "where does ilcop22 get off with these opinions?" It's easy. I'm from Illinois. You can't **** in my state without paying a tax, and our constitutional rights are violated on a regular basis. Ever heard of a FOID card? Know how many concealed carry permits we've issued? I rest my case.
The sad part is you swallowed that stuff and did not move.

No sympathy from me as we moved to get away from tyranny.

[gandydancer]

In your spare time check as to where and who had all the laws & rules that made up the 4473's and where all them laws came from?? does the 1st senator Dodd of CT ring a bell? GD

Gun regulation of the Third Reich[edit]

Nazi law to disarm Jews
The 1938 German Weapons Act, the precursor of the current weapons law, superseded the 1928 law. As under the 1928 law, citizens were required to have a permit to carry a firearm and a separate permit to acquire a firearm. But under the new law:

Sources for Connecticut's role in the gun control debate



The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which “protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” was written in December 1791, yet since then this issue has often been subject to as much interpretation and argument as any other in our nation. The right to own a gun, central to many as representative of our rights and responsibilities as citizens, has been controversial and divisive throughout our country’s history, yet never more so than the present. Connecticut was tragically placed in the forefront of the gun debate after a horrific mass shooting of 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December 2012. History shows us that Connecticut had other roles in history in the gun debate, particularly in the formation of The Gun Control Act of 1968.

Thomas J. Dodd placed himself in the forefront of the debate when he represented Connecticut in the Senate in the 1960s. Born in Norwich in 1907, Dodd graduated from Providence College in 1930 and earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 1933. He worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Youth Administration in the 1930s and was an assistant to the United States Attorneys General from 1938 to 1945. One of Dodd’s most notable accomplishments was serving as Executive Trial Counsel during the Nuremberg Trials in 1945 and 1946, which prosecuted Nazi war criminals after World War II.

Dodd served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Connecticut’s first district, from 1953 to 1957, and in the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971. As a Senator, one of his signature causes for which he relentlessly fought was that of gun control. As early as 1961, as Chairman of the Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee, Dodd was speaking out about the need for greater regulation, citing the problem of violence on television and rising levels of gun violence, particularly as it affected young people. Dodd broadened his focus to encompass all gun violence and in 1963 crafted Senate Bill 1975, a Bill to Regulate the Interstate Shipment of Firearms, which promoted the need for regulation of interstate sales of long guns, dealt with issues of juvenile delinquency and accessibility to firearms, and barred criminals and the mentally deficient from owning guns. Dodd contended that this bill would not render an undue burden to lawful gun owners; in a statement he made to the Senate’s Commerce Committee on December 13, 1963, he said it “ involves no real obstacle to any law-abiding citizen who wishes to purchase a weapon, no more an obstacle than that to operate a bicycle, far less than that required to operate an automobile.” The bill, which Dodd described in a speech given on August 12, 1964, was “unreasonably and unjustly opposed by a loud and well organized hard-core minority,” faced resistance and died in the Commerce Committee without a vote ever taken on it.

The defeat of S. 1975 did not deter Dodd’s quest for gun control legislation, and he pressed ahead with other bills. Senate Bill 1592, A Bill to Amend the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which Dodd submitted in May 1965 at the request of President Lyndon B. Johnson, sought to control the illicit sale of guns “to known criminals, mental patients, narcotic addicts and others to which local law prohibits the ownership of firearms.” With the encouragement of the National Rifle Association thousands of hunters across the country sent Dodd letters stating their opposition to the bill. Like Dodd’s previous bill, this one died in committee.

Dodd pressed on. In January 1967 he introduced a similar bill, designed to increase fees and the regulation of firearms dealers and impose a federal minimum age requirement for handguns and long guns. Better known as the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968, it passed in the Senate in May 1968 and by the House of Representatives on June 6, the day after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

Other firearms measures were introduced, including the proposal to ban interstate sales of long guns, affixing a serial number on all firearms, and establishing a national gun licensing system, and on October 22, 1968, President Johnson signed the Gun Control Act of 1968. The main objectives of this Act were to eliminate interstate traffic in firearms and ammunition; deny access to firearms to minors, convicted felons, and persons who had been committed to mental institutions; and enact prohibitions on the importation of firearms “with no sporting purpose.”

Dodd’s Congressional papers, held in Archives & Special Collections of the University of Connecticut Libraries, are replete with the many speeches, press releases, passages from the Congressional Record, and memoranda where he spoke out for the need for gun control. The records show he repeatedly spoke to Congress on this issue, citing statistics and examples of the rise in crimes involving firearms in localities across the United States. His passion on the topic shows in every document and aptly illustrates his relentless fight against overwhelming opposition. In October 1968, following the passage of the bill, he wrote “No one can predict how many lives will be spared because of this bill, but, if the bloody record of our yesterdays is any measure, millions of future Americans will live to enjoy the promise of many peaceful tomorrows. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to play a part in this great moment in our time.”

Links to sources in the Thomas J. Dodd Papers:

Statement by Senator Thomas J. Dodd...concerning S. 1975, with Amendments, a Bill to Regulate the Interstate shipment of Firearms, to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, December 13, 1963.

[Elkins45]

If it weren't for the NRA none of you would be able to own a gun today. Certainly not a handgun.