Eligibility is not a judgment call about whether you would make a good dealer. It is a list, and § 478.47(b) says the Chief of the Federal Firearms Licensing Center shall approve a properly executed application if the applicant meets every item on it. That word — shall — is what makes this a checklist rather than a discretion. Meet all five conditions and the license is approved; fail one and no amount of experience, capital, or good intent recovers it.

The five run as follows. The applicant must be 21 years of age or over. The applicant must not be prohibited under the Act from shipping or transporting firearms or ammunition in interstate or foreign commerce, from possessing them in or affecting commerce, or from receiving any that have moved in that commerce — and for a corporation, partnership, or association this reaches any individual who possesses, directly or indirectly, the power to direct or cause the direction of its management and policies, so a disqualified person behind the business disqualifies the business. The applicant must not have willfully violated the Act or its regulations. The applicant must not have willfully failed to disclose material information, or made a false statement about any material fact, in connection with the application. And the applicant must have premises in a State from which the business is conducted, or from which they intend to conduct it within a reasonable period of time.

Two of those repay a second reading. The word willfully appears in both the violation condition and the disclosure condition, and it is doing real work: the standard is not that a mistake was made but that it was made knowingly. The premises condition, meanwhile, is satisfied by an intention to conduct business from a place within a reasonable period — the regulation does not require the doors to be open on the day the form is filed. Where the Director has reason to believe an applicant is not qualified under § 478.47, § 478.71 provides for a notice of denial on Form 4498 setting out the matters of fact and law relied on, and the applicant then has 15 days from receipt to request a hearing. Let those days pass without requesting one and the application is disapproved and returned marked as such — § 2.3 follows that path to its end.