Shipping Firearms via UPS

[BILL7532]

The only firearm related items that you are allowed to ship via UPS now without an FFL contractual shipping agreement are optics and scopes, there's a specific exception for those in their policies. Even something as innocent as a bare stock, picatinny rail, or even a plastic AR grip are considered firearms parts and are now required to be shipped from an account with an FFL agreement.

So are you saying that online e-tailers that sell things like triggers, magazines, rails, stocks and other accessories but do not actually sell firearms have an FFL shipping account or are shipping against UPS policies?

I know I order quite a bit online from vendors that sell such items that would have no reason to have an ffl license as they do not sell firearms at all.

 

[Kiba]

So are you saying that online e-tailers that sell things like triggers, magazines, rails, stocks and other accessories but do not actually sell firearms have an FFL shipping account or are shipping against UPS policies?

I know I order quite a bit online from vendors that sell such items that would have no reason to have an ffl license as they do not sell firearms at all.

Correct. If you're shipping "firearms products" you must have a signed firearms shipping contract on file with UPS, and to have one of those requires a federal license (FFL) even if you only want to ship something like a barrel, bare wood stock, or iron sights. Scopes are the only firearm part specifically exempted from needing an FFL associated shipping account.

Here's the details on the UPS page:

How To Ship Firearms | UPS - United States

Information from UPS about how to ship firearms, which are considered a special-care shipment and require some extra steps before packing them up and shipping.

www.ups.com

And here's a a copy of the actual firearms and firearms products shipping agreement they send you to sign and comply with if you want to ship serialized firearms or simple parts / firearm products (i.e. any gun part that isn't a serialized action, scopes being the only thing specifically exempted):

Copy of UPS' shipping agreement for gun dealers

Here is a copy of UPS shipping agreement for gun dealers, which was released after the carrier cancelled accounts.

armedamericannews.org

 

[davidsaidwhat]

I bought a trigger from Optics Planet earlier this week and a rail earlier this month. Trigger was was shipped DHL, and rail was shipped USPS. Small sample size, but recent.

 

[prebancolt]

About a month ago I tried to ship a long gun through UPS....... almost impossible. After visiting 3 sites, I gave up. I didn't try ship my gun, shame on me, I'll give it a shot on the next one. Anyway, drove 5 minutes down the road to Fedex.....not an issue. Ho hum, gimme the package and the money and you're good to go. It took me longer to tape my label to the box than it did to ship it.

 

[Rob01]

You got lucky as FedEx has the same ban.

 

[Kiba]

You got lucky as FedEx has the same ban.

Yep, and if something happened in transit they would not have reimbursed him as he was in violation of their policies. Much like UPS, FedEx also now requires any shipment containing a firearm to be sent only from an FFL with an FFL shipping account with FedEx.

I'm not sure if FedEx is as bad as UPS and requires an FFL shipping account just to ship gun parts, but I try not to use FedEx for anything as they suck, lol. They are always late and have lost or damaged far more packages for me than UPS and USPS combined.

 

[Jefe's Dope]

You can ship long guns USPS.

 

[ToddM]

Just as an update, I dropped this off at a UPS Hub on Thursday and had no issues (aside the fact the first time I went there they were closed as the hours were 8am-1pm and 5pm-8pm. That said I got a well seasoned very nice UPS woman working at a large off-airport cargo UPS hub who had probably seen everything and anything being shipped. She knew right away the manufacturer Beretta and policies on shipping guns. She did say that as long as the shipper has a UPS firearms account and the box is pre-labeled from that firearms account and it's a vendor they know it's never a problem. If it's an individual FFL or manufacturer they don't know they take the time to verify the UPS account and as long as the label was generated from a firearms shipping account it's no problem. They absolutely will not accept any firearm with a label on it that is not from a UPS firearms account.

I did call a different slightly closer UPS hub first, and they said they would not accept it, not because it was a firearm, but because their hub was not authorized to accept any "restricted articles" shipments. It sounded like quite a few UPS hubs are not accepting those types of shipments recently because they don't have proper secure storage for them. The UPS info page on the hub didn't say that they wouldn't accept those shipments, but for the UPS hub I did go to the UPS locator page for that site the services tab specifically said they did accept restricted articles shipments.

I've seen this at the large local Fedex hub posted as well recently that they no longer can accept any restricted articles and directing customers to another Fedex hub location for those items.