This is another reason for allowing guns in the Uk, it takes months to get a shotgun licence
What do you have to do to get a license for a hunting rifle or a pistol?
Here in my state, we only need a license to carry a concealed pistol (which I have and do every day.) However the concealed carry laws vary from state to state, and just because you have a permit in one state, it more than likely does not apply to surrounding states. I live in northern Virginia, and the second I cross the border into Washington DC or Maryland with a concealed pistol, I would go straight to jail. However Virginia permits do apply to some states, I can carry concealed in North Carolina and West Virginia, as well as some other states elsewhere in the US. You can usually figure out what states have strict gun laws, look for the states with the most crime.
The only other reason that I know you need to have a "license" to buy a gun is if you are going to buy fully automatic weapons, then you need what is called a "class 3 license." If you get a class three license the ATF (alcohol, tobacco and firearms) Agency can come to your house at any time and demand to look at all your guns. I have no desire to have a fully automatic weapon. That is for people who don't know how to shoot. Not to mention, ammo is expensive lol. I am stocking up now, before Obama taxes the hell out of them, which he is going to do. And from what I understand, getting a class three license is a really difficult process. As it should be. I am all for the right to keep and bear arms, however there is no reason for the average guy to have an fully automatic ak47. Not to mention, my AK47 (which is a semi auto, meaning one shot per trigger pull) cost me about 380 dollars. If it were fully automatic, it would cost around 15,000.
This is not to say however that you can just walk up to a gun shop and slap some money down on the counter and buy a gun. Not even close. There are numerous forms to fill out, and then they call some government agency to do background checks on you. You cannot buy if you are a felon, on probation, illegal immigrant (they just buy them on the black market anyway, however permanent resident legal aliens can buy guns legally.) You also cannot buy a gun if you have a restraining order against you for domestic violence, have been convicted of a drug charge, have ever renounced your American citizenship, have ever been ordered into a psychiatric ward, have received a dishonorable discharge from the military (although I think you can get a waiver for this, depending on what you got kicked out for,) and there are a few other restrictions as well. And if you think you can lie on the forms that you fill out, you will get caught, and that is a BIG TIME felony. You will go to jail for that, as you should. A friend of a friend (who I do not know personally) just tried to test that system. She had her second amendment rights taken away because of something she got convicted of, and her dumb ass went into a pawn shop and tried to buy a gun. She lied on the form of course, but when the pawn shop ran her information through the system, it came up that she was a criminal. The cops were there in a few minutes to drag her ass straight to jail. You can get YEARS in the pen for that shit.
You CAN however buy a gun from a private owner. If I remember correctly, if you do this, the seller accepts the responsibility of knowing weather or not you can own a firearm, so I would only suggest selling a gun to someone you know VERY well. If you just sell a gun to someone off the street, and that person is not allowed to have one, guess what? You are fucked! Guns need to stay out of the hands of criminals. Now I know that gun laws don't do hardly anything at all in preventing criminals from getting them.
Take for example Washington DC. Up until the supreme court ruled that the DC law preventing gun ownership was unconstitutional (as it was) law abiding citizens were VERY restricted on what they could own in DC. Not that there was any affect on crime because of these laws. DC has a VERY high gun crime rate amongst criminals (which had steadily climbed since they started the ban.) However, I think that background checks are a good idea, and I like the way that VA does things. Criminals will always get guns, however in my opinion we cannot make it easier for them to get them all the while not making it hard for law abiding citizens from owning them.
Another thing about buying guns is that you cannot buy a gun if you are not a state resident there. I could not go into North Carolina and buy a piece there (even though my concealed permit allows me to carry there if I am on vacation in that state.) They can ship it through an FFL dealer from state to state, and then you go into the gun shop it was transferred to and they will do all the paperwork and background checks. So if you see something rare in a gun shop out of state, you can always get them to do an FFL transfer if it is something you really want. That is how you buy guns online. They WILL NOT ship it to your house. You have to go through a gun shop, which the online seller will transfer to. And that FFL transfer isn't free either, the gun shop doing the work is going to charge you about 50-75 bucks, which is understandable, they have to stay in business.
