C&R Importer field in bound book records

[ocabj]

I just started off my C&R collection with a Mosin-Nagant 91/30 purchased from AIM. I was checking the format of the bound book records required by the ATF. One field is designated "importer or manufacturer". I noticed that the rifle was tagged with instructions with the Century International Arms Inc, name, logo and address. Is Century what I should enter in the importer field while AIM is the person/org the rifle was received from?

 

[WonderNine]

Yes, I would use the importer and a description of the rifle for that field.

 

[LightningLink]

For the importer, you should go by what's stamped on the rifle. Tags could have been put on by anyone along the way, but only the importer would/should stamp the rifle. Usually the stamp is near the muzzle of the barrel or on the receiver itself. It should say something like "CAI, St Alb VT Russia 7.62x54R" indicating the importer, their location, country of origin and caliber. Sometimes the model will be stamped as well. Although CAI is Century (beats me why it's not C.I.A.), I make no attempt to interpret and simply log exactly what is stamped. If by chance it's not stamped (which does happen), then I'd say go by the tag or contact AIM for clarification.

For the Receipt column, you would put who you purchased it from, AIM in this case.

LL

 

[DMK]

I have at least one gun that has no importer stamp anywhere on it. I even field stripped it down to major components and carefully inspected. Since it was from a private sale and the seller was not an FFL of any type and didn't know who the importer was, I just wrote down "No Importer Stamp" in the box.

However, most guns will have an importer stamp somewhere on the barrel or frame/receiver, so look carefully.

 

[BenW]

Slightly off topic, but here's a good page for identifying importer marks on C&Rs:

http://www.northwest-denture.com/mauser1896/importmarks.html

 

[EOD Guy]

Import marks were not required before 1968 so there are many thousands of foreign made firearms in this country without import marks.