Originally Posted by
Hornetb
Works as a gunsmith, doing gunsmithing jobs or actually manufacturing new firearms? I know the law varies from state to state, but in Tasmania at least, you need to be a licensed firearms dealer to perform any gunsmithing work (and this isn't manufacturing). This could be drilling and tapping an action, disassembling for cleaning or replacing a broken part, installing a scope, or threading a barrel and rebarreling an action. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that is actually the way it is worded in the legislation and its the law.
The manufacturing aspect, means starting from a non-registered piece of steel and creating a new firearm or assembling the parts to create a working firearm. I'm forgetful on the details but this manufacturing component requires an additional licence, which specifically allows for the production of firearms and it is this licence that is particularly difficult, nigh on impossible to get, at least in Tas. There are only one or two licenses of this class held in Tas that allow someone to do this, one was Alex Beer, a custom gun maker in the north of the state who builds high end custom double rifles and pistols.
I have a friend (a licensed dealer) who explored the possibility of designing and building custom competition guns. They presented the business plan and were looking for the necessary licenses to look at producing a CNC built action but they were denied the license by the firearms registry for a number of reasons, but mostly that they wanted to limit the number of those licenses available.
Anyway. It would certainly be fun to be able to pursue this aspect of the machining hobby like those in more liberal countries, but this is Australia. The nanny state.