FYI shipping scopes out of the USA

Z

z4lunch

New member
Steve here... I sold a scope to a guy in Finland that I had in the classifieds back in the first week of January. He paypal'd me for the scope and I sent it thru the mail.
Bout a month later I got an 8 page letter from US Customs. They seized my scope, claiming I needed a permit to send it out of the US.
The short of it. I had to fill out two forms one of which had to be notarized, I had to send a letter of what happened, and had to pay a $250 fine. All of which i had to send with a prepaid shipping label for them to return my scope. I just got home from the post office with my scope(finally) and with two more forms to fill out and mail back to US Customs.
just my 2cents guys...don't ship anything out of the US without contacting customs. There rules are totally different than the Post office rules.
Steve
 
I posted a thread quite some time ago about the new import/export laws... many changes since 911...

Check with the US State Department for a list of 'restricted items' that require import/export paperwork...
 
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Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety, my wife says so anyway, but it sure seems to me that sending a scope or bullets or something else that's common and likely done as well in several other places as it is in the USA because some fool in DC doesn't want terrorists getting our "secrets" and assassinating us all strikes me as bizarre in the extreme. Obviously Schmidt & Bender, Swarovski, Zeiss, and several others make some fairly good scopes, so a Leupold BR scope likey isn't rocket science to anyone interested. The same with bullets, triggers, stocks, and most other stuff that's restricted by the geniuses in the State Dept.

My soap box is now put away for awhile....
 
Larry,

Think about it this way.

There is terrorist activity going on around the world every day, in countries of every political & religious persuasion. Occasionally, we hear stories of strikes being thwarted, but mainly the attacks succeed.

Now, if you're a government of any colour & your citizens are concerned that they or their loved ones & friends might be killed or maimed in this way, then you need to do something to show them regularly that you're on the job. One country might have custom agents at points of entry delaying, harassing & otherwise sodding off those entering, others might introduce a prohibition with a big cost & flourish (as our former leader did after the Port Arthur massacre) then conspire with the administrative levels of government to play dead on the success of the (lack of) scheme or they might just ban the direct export of products that are readily available elsewhere while just coincidentally supporting the franchise arrangements that the manufacturers of those products have made with dealers in the other countries.

The people directly interfered with are reminded every time what the purported aim of their government is, but most don't ever think to analyse or ask whether it's at all effective.

John
 
z4lunch said:
Steve here... I sold a scope to a guy in Finland that I had in the classifieds back in the first week of January. He paypal'd me for the scope and I sent it thru the mail.
Bout a month later I got an 8 page letter from US Customs. They seized my scope, claiming I needed a permit to send it out of the US.
The short of it. I had to fill out two forms one of which had to be notarized, I had to send a letter of what happened, and had to pay a $250 fine. All of which i had to send with a prepaid shipping label for them to return my scope. I just got home from the post office with my scope(finally) and with two more forms to fill out and mail back to US Customs.
just my 2cents guys...don't ship anything out of the US without contacting customs. There rules are totally different than the Post office rules.
Steve
Click to expand...

What sort of scope?
Not a tactical one by any chance?
As far as I know only tactical scopes are restricted.

Michael
 
As far as I know all rifle scopes require import/export paperwork in advance... as well as bullets, brass, primers, ammo, all shotgun parts, many rifle parts, barrel blanks and finished barrels.
 
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