Why, why, why do folks persist in asking these questions, over and over, instead of looking up the CORRECT answers on the ATF site. The section is called, oddly enough, FAQ(Frequently Asked Questions). There you can find the correct answers to all this stuff, minus the "I was always told", "my brother-in-law's 3rd cousin said", "my mamma done tol' me" and all the other garbage that always turns up. Most of what was said here is correct but not all of it. Deja vu, all over again, for the hundredth time.
Oddly enough I did look there, and my questions were NOT answered...so I resorted to reading the text of the entire law, and I'm still not sure. Every time I find something that seems to be an answer I find something that seems to contradict it or at least leave a very wide open loophole, and the few examples given in the FAQ section are all different situations than I would find myself in--they seem to either apply to sales or to professional gunsmiths...is there no in-between, i.e. the hobbyist who might help out a friend with a broken stock? For instance, it says a nonlicensee may not transfer a gun to another nonlicensee in another state...yet it says they can loan it (with no definition of what "lawful sporting purposes" are, and with no limit to duration), and then there's the "in the business" clause. I, and I suspect others, ask the questions over and over because the information is NOT on that site in a manner that seems at all clear to me. Maybe I'm missing something, which is the reason for my questions. Any lawyers in the house?
Edit: In the meantime, I have called the local ATF office and will post the reply here--the person I spoke with was stumped and said they "hope to get back to me within the week".
