I asked the owner of the gun shop where I have purchased my other guns
here in MA. He's an FFL and he didn't know what I should do. He said
he couldn't buy it from me even if I almost gave it away. No records
of how I obtained it, he said.
You're the buyer in an out-of-state transfer. Seems pretty clear. He's a dealer. They're governed
differently than individuals.
Actually since Richard knows where he bought it and presumably the
approximate date he could have his dealer call that dealer and get the
details of the transaction from his "bound book". Since it is Walmart,
it may even be in their computer system.
This gets a lot tougher if you are talking about a dealer that went
out of business and may not have turned over all of his "bound books".
Then there is the old "we had a fire".
I am sure there are plenty of those transactions that are simply lost
and gone forever.
I doubt BATF would thumb through all of those books anyway unless it
was someone really important who was shot. That is why we don't hear a
lot about gun traces if the gun has been around a while.
If I were Luddite, I would go here and start the process: