BIS Issues Corrections, Clarifications for 2020 Gun Export Control Transfer Rule

The Bureau of Industry and Security released a final rule to make technical corrections and clarifications (see 2108110010) to a 2020 rule that transferred export control jurisdiction over certain firearms from the State Department to the Commerce Department. The rule, released Aug. 18 and effective Sept. 20, introduced changes to make the requirements “easier to understand” and “interpreted consistently,” BIS said.

BIS said the revisions will help “improve understanding” of the January 2020 rule, which transferred firearms, ammunition and other defense items to the Export Administration Regulations because they no longer warranted control on the U.S. Munitions List (see 2001170030). The changes are “informed” by BIS’s licensing, classifying and enforcement experience over the past year, and through outreach conducted with the public about the original rule changes.

Many of the changes are technical revisions to various sentences and references in the agency’s regulations, while others clarify requirements that exporters must meet before shipping goods classified under certain Export Control Classification Numbers. For instance: One change will clarify that all BIS licenses for ECCNs 0A501 and 0A505 commodities must include a “standard rider” that requires the applicant or exporter to have a current “FC Import Certificate on file prior to export,” and those certificates are valid for four years. “This clarification addresses a common question that BIS has received regarding the validity period of FC Import Certificates,” which are usually valid for one year, “as compared to the validity period of BIS licenses,” the agency said.

Another change will revise newly redesignated Note 3 to 0A505 by removing the word “lead” from the term “lead shot” and adding the word “metal.” BIS said it will make this change to address “the fact that steel and bismuth shot are also used for hunting loads, so the control parameter should not be limited to lead as the only material.” In another revision, BIS will correct the text in ECCN 0E505 relating to the RS (regional stability) Control paragraph in the license requirement section. BIS said the phrase “entire entry except” was “inadvertently” included in the RS Control paragraph in the January 2020 rule, which has caused “confusion” about the intended scope of the RS license requirement. To resolve the confusion, BIS will remove the “unintended phrase ‘entire entry except.’”