ATF Admits New 4473 Fiasco: ‘We Screwed Up’
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor
Officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) may be wiping the egg off their faces for a while in the wake of the agency’s failure to distribute copies of the revised Form 4473 to federally-licensed firearms dealers in time for a changeover in the National Instant Check System (NICS) that occurred on Feb. 19.
The revised form is tied to a new procedure for FFL dealers when calling for a NICS check. Now, before any other questions are asked of the dealer, a NICS operator asks whether the buyer has confirmed whether he or she is a US citizen. If the buyer is not, then the call is transferred to a NICS supervisor who asks several other questions.
Unfortunately, for what appears to be quite a few retailers across the nation, they did not have the updated forms to conduct business on Feb. 19, and that created quite a headache. Some were not even aware that they would need the new forms, as Gun Week has learned from various sources.
“We screwed up,” acknowledged Jim Crandall, a program manager in ATF’s Public Information division. “As I understand it, we had contracted with an outside printer to print up these forms. The printer was contracted to ship them out the door by Feb. 8, but they did not make the deadline and as a consequence, dealers did not get the forms.”
Perhaps further compounding the problem was that there were no mail deliveries on Feb. 18—President’s Day.
Crandall acknowledged that the change had actually been in the works since last October, but explained that the agency only had a couple of weeks “lead time” from the time that official notice of the change was first published, to the Feb. 19 effective date. That was not enough time to supply every FFL dealer with the new 4473s.
The explanation did no good for dealers who were left scrambling on Feb. 19 to contact the FBI and ATF for revised forms. Crandall and a source at the FBI both said their agencies faxed copies of the new form to every FFL dealer who called, plus a letter of variance that allowed retailers to reproduce the forms on their store copy machines until enough of the genuine forms were made available. Normally, dealers are not permitted to use reproductions of the Form 4473, only originals printed and supplied by the Bureau.
Crandall assured Gun Week that, “This was certainly not an attempt by anyone at ATF to undo the Second Amendment.”
But that did not solve the problem for gun retailers like Dave Anver, president of Dave’s Guns in Denver, CO. Quoted by Associated Press, Anver said he did not know about the change until the day it was required, and he complained that no retailer in the state could make a sale without the new form. Colorado is a point-of-contact state and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) refused to process any background checks unless information was submitted on the new form.
There is some conflicting information about this, however. At the recent Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show in Las Vegas, held the first weekend in February, ATF agents told retailers attending a workshop that notice of the new forms had been mailed to every FFL dealer. Gun Week learned that gun shops in the Seattle, WA, area had received their new forms about a week before the change took place.
Sources at both Central Guns in Seattle and Wade’s Eastside Guns in Bellevue confirmed their new 4473s had arrived in advance.
However, Brian Elstro, manager of All American Pawn in Richmond, IN, contacted the Second Amendment Foundation—which owns Gun Week—to report that he had received no advance warning that the change was coming.
At least one dealer in the Buffalo, NY, area received the FBI notification letter and the new ATF forms in his Feb. 19 mail.
While Crandall cooperated with Gun Week, the FBI’s NICS center was less informative. When we asked to speak to a public information officer, we were advised that our questions would have to be submitted in writing, via fax, and a reply would be forthcoming.
An FBI staffer confirmed that telephone lines had been jammed on Feb. 19 by retailers who suddenly discovered they could not do business.
The revised 4473 asks one question that the old form did not: Whether the firearm is being sold at a gun show, and where that show is located. In addition, the new form is substantially re-designed, with a different breakdown for “Race.”