How to Sell a Gun in Nebraska

Nebraska splits firearm background checks in two, and which half applies depends on what you are selling. ATF's Permanent Brady State Lists record Nebraska as a partial point-of-contact state: the state is the point of contact for handgun purchase certificates, and the FBI handles everything else, long guns included. One seller at one counter on one afternoon can therefore be on two different systems, and the pistol and the shotgun out of the same safe do not travel the same route.

Nebraska is also one of the twenty-eight states that issue a permit federal law treats as a substitute for that check. ATF's Permanent Brady Permit Chart lists Certificate to Purchase Handgun and Conceal Carry Handgun Permit as qualifying alternate permits for Nebraska. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(t)(3)(A) a dealer may complete a transfer without running a fresh check when the buyer presents a permit that allows him to possess or acquire a firearm, that was issued no more than five years earlier, and that was issued by the state where the transfer is taking place.

Three things that permit does not do, and all three are worth saying out loud to a buyer who turns up expecting a five-minute transfer. It does not replace the federal firearms transaction record — the dealer still completes and keeps the Form 4473. It does not oblige the dealer to use the exemption: whether to rely on the permit instead of running the check is the dealer's decision, not the buyer's. And it is good only in the state that issued it, so a Nebraska permit does nothing for a buyer who lives elsewhere and will be collecting the firearm from a dealer at home.

Where an appeal goes follows the same split. A denial on the federal side — a long gun — is an FBI decision and is appealed to the FBI on the transaction number the dealer can give the buyer. A denial on the Nebraska side is a Nebraska decision and goes to the state instead. Nobody at the counter will work that out for you, and sending a buyer to the wrong one costs him weeks.