Purchasing Firearms With Work/Student Visa

[ugimports]

Wrong, With your statement that they're "intent as Non-Immigrant is to permanently stay" in the U.S. they're immediately in violation of his/her immigration status.

Better stay with the FFL regs.

The only point I was making is:
They may start with a student visa (non-immigrant visa).. at some point they may decide to stay permanently and apply for immigrant visa. Just because they have a non-immigrant visa at the time of getting a firearm does not necessarily mean they will never choose to stay and make a residence. It does mean when they initially applied to come to the country it may have been for school, work, etc.. Could also be they were testing the waters before they decided to apply for an immigrant visa.

You're right that I don't know all the laws, but I also don't know the intent of every person with a non-immigrant visa and where they are in that decision path either.

[ugimports]

as an example, the technology in Night vision googles is so ITAR restricted that it is a crime to even let a non-citizen to look through them. with firearms and other firearms accessories, there could be some hidden ITAR restrictions that you don't know about that could be violated when selling to that non-immigrant alien. for instance, I seem to recall that .50BMG rifles were prohibited from export, could that ITAR restriction applied to domestic sales to non-immigrant aliens, I dunno?

That's a little more clear than the first ITAR reference I read in the thread. I was reading it as complete export out of the country and not as a potential export within the country.

[ugimports]

+1 with the logic.

I would say nope to either card due to foreign citizen export and ITAR issues. With a visa they are still foreign citizens with no intent to stay in the USA, at some point in the future, that person will have to depart and return to their home country.

What happens to the firearm you sold them? Even allowing a foreign citizen to view an item on the ITAR list could be a violation with huge fines and the whole issue of exporting a weapon to a foreign country . . . don't even want to get involved with that.

For those that deny these folks for the reasons you mentioned I am wondering if they check the immigration status of everyone walking through the door. I understand what you're saying now, but this would also mean that a dealer can get screwed by ITAR by not checking citizen status at their physical or virtual door. Otherwise, any ITAR controlled item (Magazine, optic, etc...) can get them screwed by selling or potentially letting a non-immigrant alien even handle in their store.

That's quite scary....

[ahbailey22]

No reason to spread FUD to other dealers that may not have encountered this transaction type yet.

Agreed! Though I am in no way impartial.

Now, if you just have a policy to not sell to non-immigrant aliens because you don't believe they have any business using a firearm, that's fine.

I don't understand the assumption that all "aliens" are up to no good. I follow all the same laws, pay the same taxes (actually more) but don't get nor expect the same privileges as a citizen. If the laws allow me the privilege of purchasing firearms I can't understand being denied out of some sort of "principle" held by a dealer.

not sure how much you want to hassle, but these guys: http://hansohnbrothers.com/ can help with the import process. Not sure how that would work for any off roster handguns though.

Thank you for this I will check them out. I have no handguns in Canada, they are restricted and therefore rather useless to own.

Aron