Comment on FR Doc # 2026-09165

I submit this comment as a Federal Firearms Licensee and Special Occupational Taxpayer who delivers handguns to non-licensed purchasers and is therefore subject to the sign-posting and written-notice requirements of 27 CFR 478.103. I support this proposed rule and urge ATF to finalize the rescission. 1. The statute does not require the notice or the sign, so removing them better honors the law as written. The Youth Handgun Safety Act at 18 U.S.C. 922(x) makes it unlawful to transfer a handgun or handgun-only ammunition to a juvenile, but it contains no requirement that licensees post signs or hand out written notices about that prohibition. The notice-and-sign regime came from the 1998 rulemaking, not from Congress. As ATF now acknowledges, and as commenters pointed out during the original 1997 proceeding, nothing in the GCA compels this separate notification. ATF does not require comparable point-of-sale signage for other GCA provisions or for the categories of prohibited persons under 18 U.S.C. 922(g). Rescinding 478.103 removes a requirement the statute never called for and brings the regulation back in line with the text Congress actually enacted. 2. The original justification for the requirement is obsolete. The 1998 rule's stated purpose was to familiarize purchasers with the "relatively new" YHSA. That rationale has expired. The Act is more than 30 years old, its requirements are well-established, and they are freely and instantly available online and in the U.S. Code and Statutes at Large, which self-execute legal notice to the public. First-time licensees are separately briefed on 922(x) during their in-person application interviews with ATF. The paper notice and the wall sign duplicate information that every party is already charged with knowing and can locate in seconds. The requirement is redundant, not protective. 3. The rescission delivers real, if modest, relief that lands hardest on small businesses. By ATF's own analysis, removing 478.103 saves roughly $16 per licensee per year, about $794,272 across the industry annually, and an undiscounted $8 million over ten years. Because the majority of FFLs are small businesses operating on thin margins, eliminating a per-transaction paperwork and signage obligation is exactly the kind of low-value administrative burden that should be cut. The savings figure also understates the real benefit, since it captures only printing cost and not the staff time spent generating, tracking, and reconciling the notices at each sale. 4. No public-safety protection is lost. Support for this rescission is not support for weakening juvenile safeguards. The substantive prohibition, that a licensee may not sell or deliver a handgun or handgun-only ammunition to anyone under 18, remains entirely intact and fully enforceable. Only the redundant notice and sign are removed. As ATF correctly concludes, any risk that the public becomes less informed is de minimis given three decades of settled law, self-executing statutory notice, and the continued availability of the underlying rules. The deterrent and the penalty for unlawful transfers to juveniles are unchanged. For these reasons I support finalizing the proposed rule and rescinding 27 CFR 478.103. Thank you for your consideration.