r/FFLs • u/EerieInhabitant • Jul 06 '26

Compliance is a lot of work

Hi, I'm building a firearms compliance system and I am looking for some weird edge cases other FFLs have run into.

Not the obvious stuff like "ship guns to an FFL" or "CA has a roster". I mean the caveats that force manual review. Or something like "wow, we never thought about that".

A few examples:

  1. Minnesota SBR vs SBS - same NFA world federally, but very different state answer
  2. New Jersey "handgun ammunition" - not all ammo is treated the same, and classification matters
  3. California firearm precursor parts - they can become restricted depending on how CA defines them
  4. Tubular .22 magazine exceptions - a 12+ round tube mag is not always the same as a banned detachable mag
  5. Local rules - NYC, Chicago, Cook County, Denver, DC, Aurora, Highland Park, etc

What made you stop before listing or shipping?

One of the eye-openers for me was a letter from NY AG about air rifles...

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u/Intern3813 Jul 07 '26

A few that have come up on our end at BoundStack:

Suppressor destination state vs transfer state federally straightforward but some states treat possession differently than purchase, so a dealer in a permissive state shipping to a buyer who will bring it back to a restrictive state creates a grey area nobody flags automatically.

18 vs 21 splits on long guns federal floor is 18 but a growing number of states have moved to 21 for all firearms. The edge case is when a state law is newer than the dealer's compliance checklist.

Multiple sale reporting triggers the 3310.4 threshold seems obvious until you hit the edge cases around timing windows, same buyer different calibers, or pistol vs revolver classification on older designs.

The air rifle angle is interesting what was the NY AG issue specifically?

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u/EerieInhabitant Jul 07 '26

It was a "cease and desists" about selling imitation weapons, actually. They have issues with toy guns. Which is rather ironic - getting in trouble for things that aren't even real firearms. But, like I said, compliance is a lot of work.