Without a FFL he would have had to have answered yes to the "are you purchasing this firearm for you self" question on a 4473. I guess that would be hard to justify when you bought and almost immediately sold weapons over 50 times in 3 years.
I think the reporter threw in the story about the Barrett for the sake of drama.
Where does the story said he sold on a website that HE set up? Not that that would be an issue so long as all the sales went through an FFL for transfers. Guns are bought and sold on websites every day. There are whole sites devoted to nothing but selling guns. THere is a perfectly legal procedure for doing this — all you need to do is route the transfer though a local FFL.
Presumably, he was following proper procedure or they would have charged him with something specific. It just sounds to me like he crossed the indistinct hobby/engaged in business line.
Again, 50 guns in three years is nothing for a serious collector.
As for the straw man question on the 4473, there’s a whole grey area there. Suppose you buy a shotgun and decide after shooting a couple of rounds of skeet with it that the stock doesn’t fit you. A buddy of yours tries it, likes it and offers you a good price for it. Maybe you even make a few bucks on your buddy. Does that make you a dealer? No, it doesn’t, even if you only owned the gun for a couple of days.
Who’s to say what your intent was when you purchase a gun? Sure, there may be some pretty clear examples where this guy was buying for the sole purpose of resale. In that case, he’s screwed, but it just goes to point to the absurdity of the gun laws.
I’ll give you an example. A few weeks ago a local dealer blew out some shotguns really cheap. I was tempted to buy them, knowing that I could make $100 or more on each one reselling them. I finally decided to pass and told another local dealer about the good buy and he went and bought them. It was only after the fact that I realized that had I gone ahead and bought the guns for the purpose of resale I would have been in violation of federal law.
“I think the reporter threw in the story about the Barrett for the sake of drama.”
Well considering he had 2800 rounds for those two bolt action .50 cals, that’s a bunch of ammo for bolt actions. Even by my standards, and I buy 1k at a time at the gun shows. But that’s for semi’s, where it’s not unusual to crank off 300 rounds during a trip to the range.