Two things can go wrong at opposite ends of a license’s life, and although both arrive as a notice from ATF they rest on different tests. A denial is about qualification: where the Director has reason to believe an applicant is not qualified to receive a license under § 478.47 — the five conditions § 2.1 set out — a notice of denial may issue on ATF Form 4498. A revocation is about conduct: where the Director has reason to believe a licensee has willfully violated any provision of the Act or this part, a notice of revocation may issue on ATF Form 4500. One asks whether you should have been let in; the other asks what you did once you were.

That word willfully is the whole weight of the revocation ground, and it is the same word § 2.1 met among the issuance criteria. The standard is not that a rule was broken but that it was broken knowingly, which is why a revocation notice is a serious document rather than a routine correction. Two further grounds sit alongside it. A notice of revocation may issue where the Director has reason to believe a licensee fails to have secure gun storage or safety devices available at any place where firearms are sold under the license to persons who are not licensees — with an exception where such a device is temporarily unavailable through theft, casualty loss, consumer sales, backorders from a manufacturer, or any other similar reason beyond the licensee’s control.

The third ground is narrower and carries the chapter’s only alternative outcomes. Under 18 U.S.C. 922(t)(5) and 924(p), a notice of revocation, suspension, or imposition of a civil fine may issue on Form 4500 where the Director has reason to believe a licensee knowingly transferred a firearm to an unlicensed person and knowingly failed to comply with the background check requirement, in circumstances where the system was operating and information was available showing the transfer would violate federal, State, local, or Tribal law — or where the licensee violated 18 U.S.C. 922(z)(1) on handgun sales. This is the only place in the subpart where suspension and civil fine appear as options rather than revocation alone, which tells you something about how the remedies are graded.