Rules Eased on Gun Sales to Noncitizens WASHINGTON — The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is relaxing restrictions on the sale of guns to noncitizens because Justice Department lawyers have concluded that the rules had no legal basis, officials said on Thursday.RelatedIn a letter to firearms dealers on Thursday, the bureau said it would soon drop a regulation that bars the sale of guns to noncitizens until they can document that they have lived in a state for at least 90 days, such as by producing three months of utility bills in their name at a local address.While citizens, too, must generally be residents of a state in order to buy weapons there, the 90-day rule does not apply to them. The letter said the Justice Department had concluded that the Gun Control Act does not empower the A.T.F. to impose a stricter requirement on noncitizen gun buyers.“Once the regulations have been revised, both U.S. citizens and aliens legally present in the U.S. will be subject to the same requirements for state residency and proof of residency,” the A.T.F. said in the letter.The announcement drew criticism from some advocates of gun control measures, including Senator Frank R. Lautenberg , Democrat of New Jersey, who said that it “defies common sense and puts Americans at risk” because it could make it easier for foreign terrorists to obtain weapons inside the United States.The Justice Department, however, said that A.T.F. regulations had to be compatible with the plain text of the Gun Control Act. The agency is in the process of replacing a longstanding “interim” regulation for gun sales to noncitizens with a final rule, which led to a fresh review by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel.This month, the department published an October memorandum by the Office of Legal Counsel that said another aspect of the A.T.F.’s regulations went too far. It was a rule carrying out a section of the Gun Control Act that generally bars “aliens” who have “been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa” from buying or possessing weapons.Congress had added that restriction in 1998, a year after a Palestinian visitor shot several people on the observation deck of the Empire State Building . But the A.T.F. rule went further than the statute by applying the ban to all nonimmigrant visitors — including those from several dozen Western countries whose citizens do not need a visa to visit the United States, like Canada and Britain.In the memorandum — disclosed to the public on Dec. 8 — Virginia Seitz, the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, said the A.T.F. regulation could not go further than the statute specified. For that reason, she said, the bureau must cancel any pending investigations premised “on the view that the statute applies to all nonimmigrant aliens, regardless of visa status.”Nonimmigrant visitors to the United States who entered without a visa would still have to meet other requirements to buy a weapon — including establishing that they are residents, such as by obtaining a driver’s license with a local address.
They also have a new 4473 form. 10A now reads Ethinticity, and you have to check either Hispanic or Not Hispanic. Then you check your race. What the hell is up with that???
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