"Plead guilty to this or we'll find 127 other felonies with which to charge you and everyone you love"?If he was selling from his personal collection, how did they charge him ?
The problem, of course, is that there's no set number. When GCA 68 was passed, the head of the ATF (or whatever the agency was called back then) in Boston announced that anyone who sold more than one gun per year would be ruthlessly prosecuted as an unlicensed dealer. OTOH, we all know some old guys who have shown up at gun shows for years selling old guns "from their personal collection" who are clearly buying and selling more than they legally should. Yet they don't show up on ATF radar because, seriously, who cares who many unserialized Stevens single shot .22s you buy/sell/trade in a year?One article I read stated he sold ~70 guns in a couple of years. Do that and you will be considered a dealer, and thus expected to have a license.
Only problem with the percentage of income is that would trip up a retiree who just sold a couple of guns.The problem, of course, is that there's no set number. When GCA 68 was passed, the head of the ATF (or whatever the agency was called back then) in Boston announced that anyone who sold more than one gun per year would be ruthlessly prosecuted as an unlicensed dealer. OTOH, we all know some old guys who have shown up at gun shows for years selling old guns "from their personal collection" who are clearly buying and selling more than they legally should. Yet they don't show up on ATF radar because, seriously, who cares who many unserialized Stevens single shot .22s you buy/sell/trade in a year?
It's the tax angle that got me curious. I've always felt that the definition of "dealer" should hinge not on volume of sales but on percentage of income. I'd be interested to know if the authorities actually believed he was making a living from selling ~70 guns over a couple of years. Maybe, maybe not, but it's certainly something convenient to pin him with when one of his sales goes to a mass shooter.