I'm looking for a new hobby. I'm thinking about getting a federal firearms license. Anybody got any thoughts or advice? I'd be doing this as a part time weekend type thing not full time.

20 years ago or so a friend who owned a gun shop shut her down because of the antagonistic attitude of the ATF. Doubt it's gotten better, fwiw. Eyeguy and (killer03?) on here can give better advice.

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I'm looking for a new hobby. I'm thinking about getting a federal firearms license. Anybody got any thoughts or advice? I'd be doing this as a part time weekend type thing not full time.

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BATFE won't issue a license to sell guns as a "hobby" unless you're getting a C&R, For retail/kitchen table sales, you have to be in it for the purposes of running a business and you have to convince BATFE of this.

If you have an HOA, you will need to get approval from them to run a gun business from your home. A standard "home based business" provision won't cut it. The HOA has to specifically allow gun businesses. Additionally, if your city has zoning, the city will need to provide approval for a home based "retail" gun business. BATFE won't issue a license unless the city will allow you to have retail customers come to your home. If you're planning on doing this at your house, I would convert your garage or get a separate storage type building to designate as your "premises". This keeps customers out of your house. Additionally, BATFE is only able to inspect your premises. If your premises is a distinct area separate from your house, they can't inspect your house.

As long as you can meet those criteria, the rest of the process is easy. Unless you're doing massive volumes, don't expect to save a lot of money buying Title 1 guns for yourself. Title 2 guns and accessories generally have some deals. I suggest getting your SOT so you can sell NFA. Suppressors have a lot of margin on them.

From the beginning, computerize as much as possible. AIMI eBook has a free version if you do <500 transactions a year. For most home based FFLs, that works fine. It makes staying within federal compliance extremely easy. Stay away from paper records as much as possible.

This is going to sound very negative, and I promise you that I'm not trying to discourage getting an FFL. However, you already know all the cool things about having one so let's talk about the rest...

First off, I've only had good interactions with the ATF so far. My IOI has been great and very helpful. Probably a hit or miss situation, however.

txyaloo already touched on the HOA issue. That can possibly stop you in your tracks. The ATF WILL CHECK with your HOA so be prepared.

If you're doing this to get really cool guns for cheap or to make a lot of money or to just get cheaper pricing on toys for yourself, you'll be disappointed with the outcome. Homebased FFLs have to do transfers at $10 or $15 bucks to get people to use them. Why would someone want to go to someone else's home to do a transfer when stores like me do them for $20? Also, why would you want to spend 30 minutes of your time dealing with everything for the transfer (and sometimes A LOT more) just to make $10 or $15 bucks....

If you are going to stock guns, be prepared.... Gun markup blows. I've been in business a year and am just now getting to where we are doing the volume to get better pricing on stuff. I run small margins and do well, but I'm churning inventory every day. We make money by being a custom manufacturer. If I had to eek out a living only doing gun sales, I would probably pass on it. When crunching numbers, a lot of the guns I sell, I only see $50 bucks or so on at the end of the transaction. If you want to compete, you're going to have to run slimmer margins than I do, and that means that on a gun that I'll profit $50 on, you'll be happy to snag $25. Why go through the whole hassle of ordering it in at that point? Or stocking it.

Think of it this way... most people that don't care about prices are just going to go into a regular store and buy what they can pick up and touch. Or they are looking for the "unicorns" out there. So, you'll need to have cheaper prices to entice them into buying from you. Going to take a credit card? 3% extra off of the already low margins. Cash only? You'll need to entice people with lower prices to take advantage of that.

Look, I absolutely love what I do so I am not wanting to discourage you at all. The majority of the decisions that I have made so far have been the right ones... and one of the big ones was focusing on optics only through my garage for three years before getting my FFL and opening a store.

Main thing is if you go this route, be certain to find a specific niche and grow out from there. Luckily I found mine fairly quickly and had the financial backing to do it.

If you have questions, please, call me at 979-574-8243 and I will talk about somethings that I really won't get into on a web board.

+1 with HOA requirements. Thing that stopped me was "open to the public" meant anyone had to be able to come up to your house at any time to do business. HOA didn't like that since it would add traffic to the street. I kindly recommended placing a parking/occupancy restriction on my dwelling but I never heard back from the HOA's attorney.

As long as you follow ALL of the rules, ATF will issue the FFL, but that also lumps you in with all the past, present and future regulations which will only get more scrutinized in the coming years.

I've never had a bad experience with a transfer from a home based FFL. I've had numerous experiences that fall anywhere between so-so and horrible on transfers through brick and mortar based dealers. It works both ways. Regardless, if you decide to proceed and work with customers please make sure that you don't forget them once you have their money. Too many dealers out there take money and then do a sub par job on the follow through.

Sound advice.

I had a brick and mortar store in San Antonio in early 90s. Left the business for college and to pursue other career opportunities. Currently waiting for ffl approval from home but focusing on repair and manufacture where at least reputation can substantiate pricing. Firearm retail is a cut throat world...

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I've never had a bad experience with a transfer from a home based FFL. I've had numerous experiences that fall anywhere between so-so and horrible on transfers through brick and mortar based dealers. It works both ways. Regardless, if you decide to proceed and work with customers please make sure that you don't forget them once you have their money. Too many dealers out there take money and then do a sub par job on the follow through.

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I had one older FFL who loved to do transfers in his office while wearing his boxers and a wife beater. He was the cheapest around so I went back several times.

Blows my mind that I let him transfer more than one gun for me. He loved to finger **** all my guns too. I never touched a customer's gun, other than to get serial numbers, when they weren't in my presence.

Good info, I've briefly considered it as well

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I've never had a bad experience with a transfer from a home based FFL. I've had numerous experiences that fall anywhere between so-so and horrible on transfers through brick and mortar based dealers. It works both ways. Regardless, if you decide to proceed and work with customers please make sure that you don't forget them once you have their money. Too many dealers out there take money and then do a sub par job on the follow through.

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I had one older FFL who loved to do transfers in his office while wearing his boxers and a wife beater. He was the cheapest around so I went back several times.

Blows my mind that I let him transfer more than one gun for me. He loved to finger **** all my guns too. I never touched a customer's gun, other than to get serial numbers, when they weren't in my presence.

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Yeah, I've only actually done this once with a customer that encouraged me to do so. Pulled in a lapua for him and he was out of town for about three weeks. Told me to put it on the wall and try to sell another. Otherwise, I go out of my way not to jack around with them.