The Mountain West Firearms Podcast

Purchasing a Firearm - Myths vs Reality

• Ken Carroll

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In this episode of the Mountain West Firearms Podcast, host Robert Wareham breaks down one of the most common misunderstandings about firearms ownership — the belief that guns are “registered” to individuals. He explains why North Carolina has no gun registry and how federal law prohibits a national database of gun owners.

Robert walks listeners through how the Form 4473 background check actually works, why private sales carry risks, and what counts as a federal firearms disability. He also clarifies the process for out-of-state purchases, the importance of accurate identification, and how residency laws apply to part-time North Carolina residents.

Listeners will gain a clear understanding of the NICS background check system, what happens during a delay or denial, and why a concealed carry permit can simplify the process. Throughout, Robert shares real examples from his store experience to help demystify the process and promote responsible, informed firearm ownership.

Key Topics Covered:

  • The myth of firearm registration in North Carolina
  • How Form 4473 and NICS background checks actually work
  • Selling firearms privately and avoiding legal pitfalls
  • Understanding disqualifying offenses and “federal disabilities”
  • Dual residency and ID requirements for firearm purchases
  • What to do if your background check is delayed or denied

Closing Message:

Buying a firearm doesn’t have to be confusing. With the right knowledge and preparation, it can be a smooth, responsible process.

Introduction:

You're tuned in to the Mountain West Firearms Podcast, where honest talk and expert insight meet the world of shooting, training, and responsible firearm ownership. Let's dive in.

Robert Wareham:

Hi, everyone. Robert Wareham again from Mountain West Firearms with another podcast dealing with your right to carry and your Second Amendment rights and shooting sports in general. You know, when I sit in the store and new customers come in, I have uh learned very quickly that there's a lot of misunderstandings about how firearms law works in North Carolina and in the United States in general. One of the most common myths is that a gun is registered to somebody. You know, I had someone come in the other day and say, well, uh my wife wants a gun, but she wants it registered in her name. And I'm always quick to point out to people that in North Carolina, there is no such thing as a gun registry. And in the United States, it is actually against the law for the federal government to maintain a database of firearms owners. So where did this concept of uh firearms registration come from? Well, there are places in the United States, uh certain uh generally liberal states or liberal cities where they have passed laws that require people to have permits and to register their firearms. The most obvious one that comes to mind is New York City. Now, it's been at the epicenter of some of the firearms law litigation uh that's going on and continues to be because of Bruin versus New York uh Rifle and Pistol Association that the Supreme Court uh made a decision on several years ago. But there are places where local governments and state governments have put into place uh firearms registration schemes, but those do not exist under state law in North Carolina. So what is going on then? Because most people do know that when they come in to purchase a firearm, whether it's a pistol or a longarm, uh, that there is a background check done and that you're asked to fill out certain information, and that information is is placed on a form uh in our store. We use a computer to do it, uh, but you can also do it on a paper form, and it's called a Form 4473 that deals with a transfer of a firearm from a licensed federal firearms licensee to a private person. And that can be the sale of a new gun, it can be the sale of a used gun. And another m sort of misunderstanding out there is if you as a private party want to sell a gun to another private party, you can do so without a background check. But you're taking the risk that that party you're selling your firearm to does not have a federal disability to owning a firearm. What do I mean by federal disability? Well, you know, there's a variety of things, but to overgeneralize it, let's just say a conviction of a felony or a conviction of a misdemeanor punishable by over one year. Now, a lot of people over the years, I've had them say, well, uh I got convicted of a misdemeanor several years ago, but I don't think that should keep me from uh uh possessing a firearm because I didn't go to jail at all. Well, it isn't whether or not you were sentenced to jail even for 30 days. What matters is was that misdemeanor punishable by over a year in jail? And if in fact it was, even if you just got probation, that can be uh a bar to you purchasing a firearm. Another bar to you purchasing a firearm that uh is less commonly known, but it is a lifetime bar. And that is if you have a conviction on your record of any kind of uh domestic violence uh sort of offense. And under federal law, um what constitutes an act of domestic violence may actually be a little broader than under some uh state law. It could be uh a conviction for having some sort of domestic violence incident involving just a roommate. So you have to be careful there. But um when you're doing making a private transfer yourself, you know, unless you know this person very well and can be absolutely certain that they don't have a federal firearms disability, the safest way for you to transfer a firearm is for you to take it in to an FFL, a licensed, federal firearms licensee, and let them handle that private party transfer. Now, the other thing that happens when people come in is they say, okay, now do I have to wait any kind of period of time to purchase a handgun? And there was a time when you had to actually have a permit to purchase a firearm in North Carolina, and you had to go down to the sheriff's office, and you had to have basically a quick background check done. That law was repealed before we even opened up Mountain West Firearms. That was repealed a couple of years ago and no longer exists. Now it is possible for any law-abiding citizen to walk in to a federal licensee and buy any kind of firearm, and assuming that they have a clean record that can be verified through a national background check, uh they can leave the same time with their firearm. So what is involved there? So you come in, you're looking, let's let's deal with pistols, first of all. And uh another misunderstanding from time to time, pistols can only be purchased right now by individuals 21 years of age or older, because under both state and federal law, um a person between the age of 18 and 21 um is considered a minor for the purchase of uh purpose of purchasing firearms, and so they're not permitted to purchase them. Now I will tell you that there are some districts, um uh federal court districts, that have viewed this differently, and in light of the holding of uh Bruin v. New York um pistol, uh rifle and pistol, uh, they've come back and said, you know, no, uh if you carry that to its extreme, there is no age limitation on firearms purposes. So whether we're gonna see that uh that uh limitation uh on age 21 uh uh stand up to constitutional scrutiny going forward, I think is a a very valid question. But for now, if you want to purchase a pistol, you can come in. Uh you need to be 21 years of age. You need to be a resident of the state of North Carolina. A licensed uh FFL cannot sell a pistol or a handgun to anyone who is not a resident of North Carolina. Now, you say, well, but you know, what if people come here on vacation and they they've been looking for, you know, a cult Python stainless and they've they can't find them because they're kind of in short supply, and you've got one there in the case. Can't they buy it? Yes, there's a way they can buy it. Um, it's a little cumbersome and uh involves some expense. But what's involved then is we have to contact an FFL that is in that person's home state and make arrangements to transfer that firearm to that FFL in the home state, and then the customer, when they return home, they go to that FFL. That FFL does the National InstaCheck, uh, background check, and can then transfer the firearm to them. Most uh uh FFLs charge a fee for uh handling a private transfer like that. Mount West Firearms handles them and is an accommodation to our customers. We charge a $65 fee, but included in that $65 fee is a $25 gift certificate that can be used in the store to buy holsters, uh, ammunition, whatever. So uh really in the net uh effect it it turns out to be $40. So this person has come in, they've decided they want to buy a firearm, they've told us I'm a North Carolina resident. The next thing they do is we ask them for their government-issued photo ID. And here, frankly, is where we run into problems more frequently than we would like to. We've got someone who comes in and they've told us, oh yeah, I, you know, I I just bought a place up the road here. I live two miles away. Uh I want to buy this uh new firearm, and here is my ID. And lo and behold, we look at the ID, and what does it have? It has their address in Waynesville or Weaverville or Swannanoa, and it does not match what they have just told us is their address. They have told us, oh, I just bought property and I just moved in up the street. And so now we've got a problem. Because under federal law, your photo, government-issued photo ID must have the address of your residence on it. Now, there are some ways of getting around this. For example, if you get on if if you've moved and you've got a North Carolina ID, um, but it just doesn't say your new residence on it, but you've gone online to North Carolina Department of Transportation and you've done your address change, and it has sent you a confirming email or given you a receipt that you've done an ad uh address change. The good thing is we can use that document to confirm the new address together with the photo ID, and then we're in good shape. Another problem that comes up very commonly here in Western North Carolina is we've got a lot of folks that basically are uh, yeah, I guess you could call them snowbirds or or uh maybe they're escapees from the summer heat in Florida, but they own homes in both Florida and they own homes in Western North Carolina. So while they consider Florida to be their primary residence, they also consider themselves to have a residence here in North Carolina. Now, many people don't realize that you can be a resident of more than one state. You basically, under the law, have one domicile, and that's the place you intend to make your permanent home and where you return to, but you can say I'm a resident of North Carolina and a resident of Florida at the same time. Now, under most interstate compacts for driver's licenses, uh, we don't allow you to have driver's licenses in two states because that becomes problematic. Let's say your license gets revoked for having a driving while intoxicated. Um, you know, they revoke your North Carolina driver's license, and now you've still got a Florida license. So under the Interstate Compact, you can't have two different driver's licenses. So how do you get two different government IDs then? Well, what I suggest to people when they come up here is let's say they got a Florida driver's license and they want to keep their Florida driver's license because they consider that their primary residence, great. Just go in to the Department of Transportation and apply for a North Carolina identification card. They're going to put you through the same kind of thing. They're going to want to see a birth certificate or something else like that, and some proof that you in fact have established residency in in uh North Carolina. And I think various ways of doing that are leases, title documents, utility bills, and the like. And so that's what I encourage people to do is if you want to maintain residences in both states, pick which state you want to have a driver's license in, and in the other state, get yourself an identification card. You can also use a passport as uh a means of photo identification, but then you see the passport really doesn't have an address inside of it. I mean, yes, on the inside of the page it's got a place where you can write your address, but whether or not that is sufficient because it's not really issued by a government agency with that address on it. So we can use the photo to prove it and then use other documents in an ancillary sort of way to prove your address. So now we've gotten past that hurdle. We have determined, okay, you've got a North Carolina driver's license. Your North Carolina driver's license has your proper address on it, and it is valid. It is not expired. So we're ready to proceed. At that point, we start in with the National Insta-Check System background check. And again, we handle this with a computer. So uh at our store, you we get on and we fill in your basic information, and then we take you over to computer and have you sit down and you fill out the form there. And you have to answer truthfully all of the questions on that form, uh, and that deals with whether you have any of these conditions that would be a disability to you owning a firearm. And you need to answer those questions truthfully. Uh you may remember that Hunter Biden, uh, despite all of the accusations made in other areas regarding the laptop and everything, one of the convictions he actually got was for providing false information on a 4473 form. And that is where he represented at a time when he later admitted that he was addicted to cocaine and other illegal substances, that he uh was not, in fact, and so he checked that he was not. Well, if he had checked, yes, that he was, he knows he would not have been sold that firearm that eventually ended up in a trash can at a restaurant. So you need to read all those questions carefully, you need to answer them truthfully, and then when that is done, we go back to our computer and we log on to the FBI's National Insta check system. And with the National InstaCheck system, we take the information that you provided on the 4473 form, we upload it to the federal government, and the FBI then does an instant check. And when they say instant, I you know, I've seen them come back in a matter of two, three, four, five minutes, but I've also seen them take a lot longer. And in fact, there are times when it will come back and it will say delayed. So what happens at first, it says processing. All right, and then it might come back delayed, or it might come back and say new, or it might come back, and in those circumstances, uh it may be that there will have to be a waiting period. When does that kind of thing occur? Well, we had a uh young lady come into our um store a couple of months ago, and she would have what I would call a very common American name. You know, there are people with the last name of Smith or Jones or Miller, and when you have a common first name and a common last name and maybe no middle name, and you don't elect to put your Social Security number on the 4473 because you're not required to. You may, but you're not required to. Now it becomes a matter of as I'm searching across the country, is there someone with the same name as me or you uh that maybe has these federal firearms disabilities? I got a real surprise the other day. I was searching the uh amateur radio call sign database in Colorado to try and look up someone else's address, and I was stunned to see that there's another Robert Wareham, W-A-R-E-H-A-M, in North Carolina. We have different middle names, but this is another Robert Wareham, and he is over uh towards the coast outside of Charlotte. And I was amazed. I don't I I think, you know, uh I remember years ago that uh I I discovered there was someone with my same name somewhere else. But just imagine if that person, say, had a felony record. Well, that could be a problem for me, and it might result in to a delay. And what happens when that takes place is that does trigger a three-day waiting period. And during that three-day waiting period, the FFL is not able to transfer the firearm to the purchaser. Uh they just basically have to put it uh uh set it aside, the transaction is suspended. Now, what happens if the FBI can't clear that delayed status within that three D three days? Well, then it is within the discretion of the FFL to go ahead and deliver the firearm or not. So and that is three business days, and the day of the attempted transaction would not be included. And so what happens is when we do this, um our computer comes up and says, your Brady transfer date is the following, and that would be after three full business days from the date of the original transaction. And we have actually, since we opened in June, we've probably had two or three of those where they never were cleared. They always just say delayed. Uh, and in fact, the first one we did eventually came back and said expired, um, meaning they just sort of given up on the thing. And so you might ask yourself, well, what happens if the person ends up then uh being denied and not being cleared to have the firearm? Well, if we've gone ahead and elected to deliver it, uh we've complied with the law. Uh we can kind of wash our hands of the situation. The ATF would contact us and say, Did you deliver the firearm? And we would say, Yeah, we went ahead and gave it to them. We didn't see any problem with it. And at that point, it's up to the ATF to contact the purchaser and go out and make arrangements to retrieve the firearm. So, you know, that's something that a purchaser might want to keep in mind, because if you go ahead and accept delivery, uh now you've got a used firearm and you can't just return it to the store, particularly if it's been fired. Um, and so you're taking a little bit of risk in taking uh the delivery as well. So then what happens in most cases? In most cases, within a matter of five to ten minutes up on the computer, it says proceed. And proceed uh is the magic word that means we can go ahead and transfer to that customer the new firearm that they're purchasing. And so what we do to actually complete that background check process is we print out now a physical copy of the 4473 form. It contains all the information that the purchaser filled out online, and it contains the identification number that we got from the national insta check system. When it says proceed, it's got a number on there, a serial number that we can go to and say, okay, this is the serial number we got that said it was okay to go ahead and transfer this firearm to this customer. We put all that information onto the 4473 form, and then we take and we pull out our little accordion file that we keep in our cabinet right next to the cash register, and it's divided up by months, and we just slide that information in there. And what happens overnight, because it's against federal law, for the federal government to maintain a database of firearms owners, overnight that national insta check inquiry is purged from the system. So most people think because we ran the background check, the firearm is registered to them. No, it's not. All that we're doing is we're asking at a moment in time, hey feds, do you see any reason why we shouldn't transfer a firearm to this person? And in a matter of about ten months, uh ten minutes rather, the federal database comes back usually and says, Nope, there's no reason you can't transfer that person. And at that point, the federal government purges that information from a system. So if the same customer comes back in a week or two weeks and purchase another firearm, that'll be a whole new Nix inquiry. There's no history there, there's no record to show, oh no, this person's already cleared. Um and and they're going through that. Now, let me tell you the couple of exceptions here that you might need to be aware of. Number one exception is if you've got a concealed carry handgun permit issued by the state of North Carolina, you don't even have to go through the NICS process because you've already been background checked. You've been fully checked, and under North Carolina law, which federal law has a provision that says if the person has a concealed carry permit issued by their state of residence, and that state provides that it can be used as identification, then no Nix background check is required. So if you anticipate that you're going to be a frequent handgun purchaser, you know, mm a couple times a year potentially, it's worth getting a concealed handgun permit just for that reason alone, because it takes the purchase of a handgun or firearm uh from a 30-minute process to a 10-minute process because you still fill out the 4473 form, but you're not required to undergo the NICS check. We just do the 4473, it's all done, we stick it in the pendiflex file, and you're done. What about if you get denied and you know it's not right? Well, you can file an appeal with the FBI to say, hey, what's going on here? And let's assume for a minute that the FBI comes back after doing all this research and they say, you know, you're right, this isn't you, it's somebody else. Um then they can correct it and they can say you can go ahead and purchase. If that happens too often, the FBI can actually issue a unique identifier code to you, and you can use that in the future then when purchasing firearms to prove what your identity is that in fact you are qualified to make a firearms purchase. And um uh that makes the the process go a lot easier. But there are uh there there have been times. I I know I was formerly an attorney in um Colorado, and when I was practicing there, I used to assist people who got denials on firearms purchases and denials of concealed handgun permits and the like. And, you know, there was a time when the initial response uh from a background check in Colorado, one-third of them, had an error in them that resulted in a denial of the person's uh request to purchase. And then when the person filed an appeal within Colorado, they file it with the uh State Bureau of Investigation, and they do further investigating and go, oops, oh yeah, that wasn't you. That was an incorrect record, and so we'll move on and we uh we'll go ahead and correct that. Um sometimes we actually had to file court cases to go in and prove. There there can be situations that happen, um, and frequently it uh it seems to happen when somebody has a really old charge. Let's say you know the purchaser got involved in a a bar fight or something when they were in college, and uh uh being a former law enforcement officer, uh, you know, I can I can attest to the fact that, you know, we just sort of charge them with everything and then let the DA sort it out on Monday. And so what happens is frequently in a situation like that, someone might get charged with a disqualifying offense, either a felony or uh a misdemeanor charge punishable by more than a year in jail. And uh that'll show up on the arrest record, which the FBI InstaCheck goes and looks at and goes, Oh, that's what's uh the they've got an arrest here. Well, what happens then is after the arrest, the DA goes in and looks at it and says, Oh, come on, this is overcharged. Or maybe as part of a plea bargain, the DA agrees to reduce it to a petty, disorderly conduct, and you plead guilty to that, and nothing ever happens. You pay a little fine and then you're all done, right? The problem is that arrest record is still in there. And frequently there's nothing to show that that arrest record actually got dismissed, or that arresting charge got dismissed, and ended up in a petty disorderly conduct charge. And so now the person has this in there, it's popping up, the FBI is looking at it and saying, well, it says he got arrested for a felony, and we can't tell any differently. So we're just gonna do a denial. So those are the kinds of things where you might have to get an attorney involved to try and clean up the record there. Um just as a disclaimer, uh while I remain licensed in Colorado and I'm admitted before the United States Supreme Court, I am not admitted to practice law in the state of North Carolina. So anything you hear in these podcasts is just sort of anecdotal information based upon my experience. But if you uh need representation to solve a problem like this, uh you do need to find a North Carolina licensed attorney. Well, hopefully that dispels some of the myths and misunderstandings about the process of buying a firearm. It doesn't have to be difficult, it doesn't have to be as bad as buying a car, uh, particularly if you know what the requirements are and you come in prepared with your photo ID and you're ready to go. So we look forward to seeing you in the store. But for now, I'm Robert Wareham from Mountain West Firearms. Have a great day, and we'll see you next time.

Introduction:

Thanks for listening to the Mountain West Firearms Podcast, where skill meets responsibility. Subscribe for straight talk and expert insight, and we'll see you on the next one.