doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Is there a flaw in this plan?

My son lives in the U.K. and I owe him a visit. I'd like to perhaps buy a British shotgun so here's the plan. Apply for a visitors permit that will allow me to buy a shotgun. With that in hand visit a bunch of dealers and if I find what I'm looking for, buy it and take it with me. Maybe find a guide for some pigeon shooting. As soon as I have the gun I can apply for an occasional import permit, Form 6, and when I have that, fly back to the USA with the gun as luggage. Is there a flaw? My son can install a gun safe if necessary or I could store the gun with a local dealer. I lived in England in the late fifties but I believe the Brits have gone quite insane about guns since then. The only reason I want to do this is for nostalgia. I bought a 16 gauge Webley at Thomas Bland,s, near the Strand, in 1958 and murdered a bunch of snipe with it over the following year in Ireland.
nial

That won't work, Nial.
While it isn't technically illegal for a non-subject to show up at Heathrow with a firearm, it might as well be. On this side of the pond, there will need to be a transfering dealer between you, and the gun, before it arrives. Somedays, form 6 shows up after three weeks, or so, some other days form 6 takes four months.
My experience, the US Customs folk will be downright unfolksy when there is a firearm involved IF you don't have the little chit, signed, by one of them, stating the gun was yours prior to you going abroad. They will ask funny question about what the gun is worth (NOT what you paid for it) and how old it is, too.
I'd expect the gun would be seized by US Customs, if you got that far, Lord knows what the English do to Yanks that run afoul of UK firearms law, and, would be locked up in bonded storage, at which point you have an arbitrary number of days until said gun is destroyed. The number of days is at the discretion of the poo-bah of the perfunctories at whatever Customs fifedom you are dealing with.
I was actually dragged into a situation very similar to this by my local office of ATF (nobody at ATF can import anything, they have to use an FFL or importer) with a South African national who got some stunningly bad advice and brought his Belgian SXS and his Morgan (auto) in a container when he immigrated here.
I got the gun released. I don't know what happened to the car.

Don't try it. I do believe there was a time when one could do this, but, for civilians, anyway, that was a long time ago.

Best,
Ted

It has been a while since I toted a gun to the UK but if memory serves you need to have the details(make, caliber, serial# etc.) on visitors permit before arrival. I can get it here for you but you will need to have the gun sent to my shipper. 550$ includes everything except shipping from me to you and duty on your purchase. It is becoming more complex to export from the EU(UK is still in currently)but I can still do it. Good luck and enjoy your visit with your son.
Steve

Yes the floor in your plan is large enough to drive a coach and horses through. Now the police on this side of the pond are neurotic about persons with firearms be they old new or fake at an Airport or any where else for that matter and this is understandable. For openers firearms and us Brits are a thing for the heavily regulated sporting fraternity, they are not very commonplace for the average law abiding Brit. So if you do turn up at the Airport with a gun without the correct documentation for example a letter from your God if you have one, failing that our Queen and the prince of Wales and every member of the Brit parliament of course countersigned by your grandfather's grandfather you may be in for a bout of unrestrained nastiness. Now I know what an American accent is but to security operatives you are a dubious Foreigner with a gun needing to be neutralised. To this end you would more than likely be taken in hand by about four rather large police officers who will drag you to the ground making exerted attempts to put large cracks in your skull with the floor because you may be about to do something very un British like.
Buy a gun by all means but go through the correct channels to take it home.

I think your plan may get you into an exclusive extended stay at a exclusive government run bed and breakfast. Unfortunately it is only rated at one half star. I'd be glad to make the trip you are thinking about doing but I'd also let the pros deal with all the exporting and importing. As a plus side you will have you choice of many good doubles which you can see in person. The economics of it might make importing two or three guns as a more rationale event.

Why not buy several more than the one you want, have them imported together, and sell the ones you don't want for enough above your cost to pay for all your importation fees?

SRH

All the good Brit guns are here already.

Not all the good Brit guns are on your side of the pond just yet! I still have a use for this one though I am sure it will end up with you folks in the end.

Beautiful. That second patent thumb lever is my favorite look on a hammer gun. Dallas waxes poetic on this design in his Boss book, stating "The lines and proportion of the gun is right in every detail and the overall effect is a very elegant gun." That led me to acquire one myself, albeit a steel bar example.

I don't know if your plan is flawed or not, but I do know that when I have turned to internet forums, American's, in particular, are so anxious to be as negative as possible that they provide drastically, flat-out-wrong information. I hate to say it, but go elsewhere for your information.

In your case, the BATF MAY be the right place, and not just one local officer, but move up the food chain some, is what you want to check with. In my case, I wanted to export gun parts, and the info on forums was uniformly WRONG. Then the BATF was also wrong - BATF has ZERO jurisdiction but two different field offices didn't even know that! The third field office knew they didn't have jurisdiction but didn't know who did (true story!). If BATF isn't correct, then it may be Customs. But you gotta find someone that knows and then you have to double check them - cuz they might not know they don't know.

In my case, the solution came from emailing a US senator and they put me on to the State Department and there, the answer was crystal clear.