If a person never sells anything, how can they be "in the business"?
When a buyer purchases two or more handguns from the same dealer in any five business day period, the dealer is required to complete a Multiple Sale of Handgun form and fax a copy to ATF National Tracing Center and mail a copy to his local PD.
Multiples of the same firearm purchased in a short time frame is very unusual, indicative of someone who is buying them to resell. Especially cheap handguns.
In my experience over the last eleven years, ATF has only contacted three of my customers:
1. purchased ten pistols online while out of the country for several months. He picked up all ten the same day. ATF was at his home three days later, asking if he purchased for resale. He then showed them his collection. They apologized for bothering him, made note that he was a collector and never bothered him again. Over the last few years he's made several more multiples purchases with no issues.
2. Customer purchased eight or non NAA mini revolvers as Christmas gifts for his employees. ATF said no big deal.
3. Customer purchased four Hungarian AMD65 AK's. ATF left a business card in his door jamb asking him to call them. They quizzed him over the phone and he got snotty to say the least (his words). Met them at an ATF office in Dallas where they had copies of all his previous multiple sale reports and that an AR he had sold was recovered at a crime scene in Mexico. It was traced to the original buyer in Dallas who told ATF who he sold it to. My customer told ATF he had sold it to a Texas resident at the Market Hall Gun Show in Dallas a year earlier.. They served him a Cease & Desist letter instructing him that all future sales of his firearms must be through a licensed dealer. The reasoning was he had begun showing a pattern of buying and selling.
Two months after that, he was arrested for stealing a Bond Arms derringer at the Big Town Show in Mesquite. He was a CPA, Realtor, Reserve Police Officer and years before held FFL and SOT. While under indictment for theft of a firearm, he was ordered to dispose of ALL his firearms.
Committed suicide a couple of years later.
All that drama because he didn't want the hassle of having an FFL.