Q: Form 4473 – Delayed Calling In of Background Check. I want to know if the answer is FFLGuard‘s conservative advice and approach to paperwork or if it is an actual legal requirement in black and white that the customer sign the 4473 at, or as soon as practical, to submitting the DROS (calling NICS). We offer a 60 day layaway. We have a 4473 filled out and signed at time of sale. It can be days, weeks or even months between signing a 4473 and submitting a DROS. A required by store policy question upon submitting the DROS is “Is the information on your 4473 still accurate and correct.” Of course the customer signs a recertification of the 4473 upon delivery. Why I want to know: Changing our procedure to filling out a 4473 upon submission of DROS will result in the occasional layaway of a firearm for a prohibited or not an actual buyer. Filling out a 4473 and not signing it until DROS will result in someone missing a signature and incurs the same problem you raise in your response. Filling out a 4473 on layaway and another on DROS is going to tick off customers and confuse the record keeping. Currently (today) we stopped offering a layaway – customer must pay for the gun and start the DROS at time of purchase – and this will cost us sales. Side issue: No layaway means the customer must have ALL CA required docs to submit DROS as we will not start without them; too many CA dealers have tremendous exposure to adverse CA DOJ action because they are too slack on this.
View the answer to this and thousands of other questions in our client-only Support Center.
View Answer