The VPC is bragging in this editorial about putting gun dealers out of business:
Tougher laws and stricter enforcement cost nearly 200,000 U.S. gun dealers their licenses since the mid-1990s, a new study shows.
Led by remarkably sharp declines in states including California, Florida and Washington, the number of federally licensed firearms dealers fell 79 percent nationwide since 1994. In that year, Congress adopted new gun-control measures that still spark fiery debate.
“The sharp drop in gun dealers is one of the most important, and little noticed, victories in the effort to reduce firearms violence in America,†declared Marty Langley, a policy analyst with the Violence Policy Center.
What the VPC is not telling you is that most of those licensed dealers were collectors who obtained Type 01 FFLs for their own purposes. During the Clinton Administration, a decision was made to put “kitchen table” dealers out of business. They were portrayed as people who sold guns to criminals, when in reality, they were collectors who bought guns for themselves, and sold a few here and there to friends and family.  Sure, I won’t deny there were some bad apples in the bushel, but by in large, getting a type 01 FFL was a way to save money if you were into collecting firearms.
Clinton shut that down by directing the ATF not to issue dealer licenses to anyone who wasn’t zoned as a business. That’s where most of the reduction came from. After that, the only option for people like me was a type 03 FFL, which only applies for certain firearms. For firearms that are not C&R, I still have to go through a type 01 or type 02 FFL.
The government has been making it increasingly difficult to operate business selling firearms. This certainly makes folks at the VPC, and most other gun controllers ecstatic.
Just remember though, they only want to target criminals, and illegal guns.  It’s not about destroying the shooting culture in this country or anything, so that a political climate can be created to destroy the second amendment. If you think that, clearly you’re just a paranoid militant.