Importing Air Guns From Germany or England

[JMicikas]

Folks:

Good evening. I live it the Pittsburgh, PA area and I'm considering the purchase of an air pistol from and individual in England and an air rifle from Germany. Can anyone tell me what is required (duty fees, import applications, etc.) to get the air guns here to me in the good ole USA?

Any help would be appreciated.

Joe M.

[wasatch]

In my experience of ordering from established shops in the Netherlands and an individual from the Netherlands I've had neither duty fees or import applications (its an airgun, not a firearm). I asked established shops in both the UK and Germany if they would ship to US and it was a no-go. From the UK is was practically impossible legally and Germany shipping was prohibitively expensive or not possible. Not sure what the case would be from an individual.

Please keep us posted how your experience goes. I sometimes check egun and gunstar websites and would like to buy from individuals.

[BigAl]

The problem for a UK dealer is that the paperwork now is just daft. For a start you need to be registered with the DTI as an exporter. Then you have to completely fill out the same set of forms (over 20 pages) as BAe have to use texport a Typhoon jet fighter. It also requires the same End User Certificate. Make one small error and you could face loosing the business and going to jail. It's just not worth it for shipping a single air rifle.

The dealer I do some work for used to have the DTI licencing, although he had not actually done any in many years. He got an unannounced visit from them and it wasn't a lot of fun for him. He had to shut up shop for most of a day to deal with it. Needless to say he dropped the export licence after that. Its OK for a manufacturer exporting to a wholesaler, the size of the order spreads the costs over many items. I would think you would need to be charging around £100 to £150 per order to cover the costs involved in small orders.

Of course you may find a private seller who would attepmpt to ship overseas (well out of the EU as inernally within the EU things are different what with the common market and all) but they would still need the correct paperwork, although they might get away with it.

Alan

[yana]

Afaik, there is no legal limitation on sending airguns abroad from the uk.
Only gunshops may not sent airguns anymore to uk people.
However, export is not included in that rule so still legal.
privately its always legal to sent airguns from or in uk (as long as its uk legal limit ofcourse)
only problem in the uk are the couriers.
they state in there own rules that they will not ship airguns.
they are obligated to do so anyhow by uk law (courts decision) but not export

germany has same issues with couriers. started 1/2 yrs ago.
also, legally, its no problem afaik. aslong as <6ftp.
netherlands also no legal issues.
there áre some specific gun couriers though, but very expensive (E80-110 within eu).

I've received many guns from uk and germany over the years (and czech, spain,france, canada..)
only issue I had were few broken stocks
Ofcourse this is, for me, within eu (except canada)
outside the eu you may have to pay taxes and import duty

[BigAl]

Afaik, there is no legal limitation on sending airguns abroad from the uk.
Only gunshops may not sent airguns anymore to uk people.
However, export is not included in that rule so still legal.
privately its always legal to sent airguns from or in uk (as long as its uk legal limit ofcourse)
only problem in the uk are the couriers.
they state in there own rules that they will not ship airguns.
they are obligated to do so anyhow by uk law (courts decision) but not export

germany has same issues with couriers. started 1/2 yrs ago.
also, legally, its no problem afaik. aslong as <6ftp.
netherlands also no legal issues.
there áre some specific gun couriers though, but very expensive (E80-110 within eu).

I've received many guns from uk and germany over the years (and czech, spain,france, canada..)
only issue I had were few broken stocks
Ofcourse this is, for me, within eu (except canada)
outside the eu you may have to pay taxes and import duty

There are lots of rules for exporting firearms from the UK, to outside of EU, and air weapons are classed as firearms in the UK, and the rest of the EU, thanks to the EU harmonisation rules. As I said the registered dealer I work for used to regularly export air rifles to the US, as well as other parts of the world. He used to have an open export licence, but gave it up as the record keeping required, considering he wasn't actually doing any exports was quite onerous. Having to do the identical paper work for a £100 air rifle as for a £80000000 jet fighter or billion pound warship is silly. And it is not a case of being able to enter non applicable in any of the areas of the form. The forms have to be fully filled in, including the end user certificate, which is really a problem when selling to individuals.

Individuals are actually bound by the same rules, and potentially face the same penalties if caught trying to export without the correct paperwork. I would expect that if only caught shipping a single air weapon to a private individual in a non controversial country that they may well just be let of with forfeiture of the goods. I wouldn't want to try sending anything to the middle east though. It is interesting to note that there are a lot of people who do not realise that export licencing applies to everyone, not just businesses. Oh and don't forget that EVERY telescopic sight with a magnification of greater than 4× is also subject to strict export licensing restrictions as military hardware. The fact that probably 90% of all optical sights in use by military forces are actually below 4× magnification that strikes me as a rather odd situation. While firearms may be shipped within the EU to individuals or other businesses without restriction where they are legal to hold in the destination country, the scopes thing actually applies within the EU too! Also to be watched out for is Night Vision kit. It is not a good idea to buy from a source in the US. The export to you is perfectly OK, but if anything goes wrong you will most likely be SOL, as it is illegal to import them back into the US for repair. US customs will confiscate them when they find them, and it could make life difficult if you ever try to visit the US in future.

It is the UN Arms Trafficking Convention that is causing all this trouble, because even though sporting arms are supposed to be exempt, far too much of the equipment that we as sportsmen use is considered dual use.

Alan