Whether President Barack Obama’s executive actions on guns are legally permissible depends on how close it adheres to statute.
The law
U.S. Code 18, Section 921 defines who can be regulated as a gun dealer, “a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to manufacturing firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the sale or distribution of the firearms manufactured.”
The law continues, “such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”
Obama could ask the ATF to clarify the statute, said John G. Malcolm, a former deputy assistant U.S. attorney general.
“If he wants to expand the definition of businesses of the firearms dealer, it depends on how he would do that,” Malcolm, now with the Heritage Foundation, told TheBlaze. “It would have to be licensing subject to the regulatory framework under statute. If the action effectively changes what it means to be a firearms dealer, he can’t rewrite the federal statute.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...e-actions-on-guns-could-hinge-on-these-words/