Federal firearms license
US license to enable an individual or a company to be in the firearms business
A federal firearms license (FFL) is a license in the United States that enables an individual or a company to engage in a business pertaining to the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition, or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms. Holding an FFL to engage in certain such activities has been a legal requirement within the United States since the enactment of the Gun Control Act of 1968. The FFL is issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE, commonly shortened to ATF).
History
The federal firearms license was established to and implement the Gun Control Act of 1968. The 1968 act was an update or revision of the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (FFA), which required all manufacturers and dealers of firearms who ship or receive firearms or ammunition in interstate or foreign commerce to have a license, and forbade them from transferring any firearm or most ammunition to any person interstate unless certain conditions were met. As a practical matter, this did not affect the interstate commerce in firearms or ammunition, because the 1938 FFA lacked a provision specifically restricting "prohibited purchasers" as defined in the FFA from purchasing firearms under false pretenses/documentation (i.e. those who would otherwise have been considered "prohibited purchasers" were still able to get away with firearms purchases by providing falsified identity information; since background checks as understood today did not yet exist, convicted felons and other "prohibited purchasers" would still buy firearms unhindered by using fake identification). It was with the adoption of the Gun Control Act (GCA) in 1968, which repealed most of the FFA, that the lawful interstate trade of firearms was limited almost entirely to persons holding a federal firearms license in the United States. As background checks were available by this time, enforcement of the GCA via the bottleneck provided by background checks and the FFL requirement was more effective than that of the FFA.
Types
Imports and ammunition
Federal Firearms License holders who are a Type 01/02/09 dealer or a Type 07/10 manufacturer are allowed to occasionally import a limited number of firearms without being required to obtain a Type 08/11 importers license; how often they can do so and how many firearms they can import is solely up to the discretion of the Director of the ATF. To import a firearm, a dealer or manufacturer must apply for a permit to do so, this can be done by filling out and submitting an ATF Form 6: Application and Permit for Importation of Firearms, Ammunition and Defense Articles by a Licensee, other than an Importer.
Under federal law, a Federal Firearms License is not required for dealing ammunition only.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Federal firearms license” is uS license to enable an individual or a company to be in the firearms business. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Federal, firearms and license, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “uS license to enable an individual or a company to be in the firearms business” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5440224. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1968 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Federal firearms license” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.