If you have bought enough guns in recent years that you can answer all the questions on the background check form without really reading them, future trips to your local gun retailer might require a little more attention to detail.
Among the changes of focus for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) recently announced by the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) is an updated Form 4473, the “Firearms Transition Record,” which includes several recent changes to the form, which must be filled out each time a gun is purchased from a licensed retailer.
The draft greatly reduces the size of the form—from seven pages to four—and includes revisions to some of the questions we’ve become accustomed to answering over the past several decades. One of the changes comes to Question 21, the question about drug use.
The form’s current language indicates that any use, including legal use of medical marijuana in states where that is permitted, is a federal qualifier. The draft, however, revises the question to remove references to medical marijuana and focus on recreational marijuana use.
The revision follows the recent federal rescheduling of marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance, a weakening of the current law against marijuana possession and use. Incidentally, the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a challenge to the law that deems marijuana use a disqualifier for purchasing a firearm.
Another proposed change to the form is to reduce the number of possible answers to the question asking for the applicant’s sex to two—male and female. This common-sense change removes confusion for some who believe there are many different sexes, not just two.
Additionally, the new draft 4473 includes a revision to the somewhat confusing question about the buyer’s intent. Since federal law has never outlawed buying a gun as a gift for someone who is legally permitted to own a gun, this question often caused problems for those wishing to do just that.
ATF has focused the question more on the problem of straw purchasers—those intentionally buying guns for others who are not qualified—than gift giving. The new question asks the buyer to indicate the purpose of the transfer as a transfer for the buyer themselves, a purchase the buyer is making with their own money as a gift for someone who is not a prohibited person, picking up a firearm being given as a gift or reward, or picking up a firearm that has been repaired for someone who is not prohibited from owning a firearm.
Another change to the form is the removal of Question 21b, which currently asks whether the buyer intends to sell “sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm listed” on the form. The question was removed to avoid confusion, since under most circumstances, selling a privately owned firearm is not illegal.
Lastly, the form includes an option for “non-over-the-counter sales, seemingly providing the opportunity for FFLs to ship firearms directly to purchasers’ homes. This aligns with one of the new ATF-proposed Final Rules published in the Federal Register last week.
