So, I recently moved, and have been going through some boxes which had been sitting in the old garage since my ex was living with us.
Among the crap I found a night scope for a pistol (didn’t even know those existed!) and over 3,000 rounds of ammunition.
It was a constant argument with us, but I was always adamantly against his buying a gun, because he had severe depession and anger issues. Through discussions with family therapist, he finally agreed not to do so. Clearly, he used his usual tactic, which was to agree verbally, and then go out and do exactly what he wanted to do. :mad:
But that’s not my concern now. My current concern is whether he has a gun now, and whether it is in the house when my daughter visits. The above paragraph is included in order to illustrate the uselessness of just asking him.
So, what I want to know is, Whether there is any source (preferably anonymous) where I can look up information on gun registration? Is it possible to find out whether a person has a gun registered without them knowing you’ve made the inquiry? It would be in Fairfax County, Virginia, if that makes a difference.
There is no gun registration in Virginia, you just have to pass a background check. Until recently you could check the concealed carry permit list, but that was made private earlier this year.
To purchase a gun in Virginia from a dealer, you must be able to pass a background check. If you’re bringing a gun into Virginia previously owned elsewhere, there is no check and no permit or registration required. This is also true if you purchased the firearm from a private seller, someone not in the gun trade. If, for example, he bought a pistol from the neighbor across the street, there would be no paperwork trail at all.
If his idea of proper weapon storage still includes ‘stuff it in a box somewhere accessible and forget about it’ then I would argue he meets that criteria.
The OP didn’t say he left a gun accessible, she said he left a scope and some ammo. Not the same thing.
There is no gun registration either federally nor in most states (including Virginia). Even in the states where there is registration or licensing of gun owners, few of them allow info available to the general public. So you’re SOL.
If you are worried about your childs safety when visiting you ex, your best bet is to deal with your attorney and authorities. But you are going to have to have a better case than “I want to know if he has a gun, and if he does I don’t want him to have it”. You are going to have to articulate why it is any of your business, and why he should not have it when your child is present. I am not an attorney, this is not legal advice.
I’m worried about the night scope. I’ll take care of it for you.
Seriously, I think you should talk to whoever is in charge of visitation and tell him/her your concerns.
I have lots of guns, but I know where they all are and I would never lose 3000 rounds of ammo, not even if they were bricks of 22’s. That had to be a seriously heavy box. Is it possible that you made a typo?
Like you meant 300 rounds instead. I know that looks like a lot to people who don’t routinely handle ammo, but I don’t think I could move a box with 3000 rounds of .22 ammo. Of course, now that I’m not routinely moving a ton of paper an hour by hand and hand truck, I’ve become a bit of a weenie.
Anyhow, PM me and I’ll send you shipping money for the night scope.
Thanks everybody for the information. Not what I was hoping to hear, but pretty much what I thought. My hope was that if he didn’t have it registered, then what I’d found would be enough for someone in authority to at least investigate. As it is, I don’t think there is anything to go on. I did ask Celtling last night if she’d ever seena real gun (i.e. not on TV) and she said “no”, so that’s a relief.
There were quite a few boxes (fifteen-ish) of .22 rounds, I think 250 or 350 rounds in each. I was guessing conservatively. I couldn’t carry the box - had to use a wheeled carrier. There were also one or two boxes of .9mm (“Luger”)
The ammo is in the “Hazardous Materials” box at the dump now. The scope will stay with me for the moment in case evidence is needed.
As for the visitation issue - the question after “Does he have it” would be “How is it secured?” But I’d have to get an honest answer to the first question in order to achieve anything useful.
PK - Wow. this is GQ, and I’m not going to go into the pages of info necessary to make you understand how wrong you are. Let’s just say you are getting out of GQ territory, and I opened this question here for precisely that reason. That’s also why I felt the need to explain the relevance of the paragraph on personal issues.
Yes, I was horrified and wanted it out of the apt immediately. This place is only about 1100 sq ft, and something like that is hard to hide from a child. especially since I couldn’t lift it all onto a high shelf. On a Sat afternoon, that was my only option.
And no, I don’t know what it was worth, only that it had a fairly large aggregate explosive content. The realization that it had ben in storage in our home for so long made me want to puke.
Don’t get me wrong here guys, I was quite the riflery champ as a young Celt, but this was a shock and I would never keep ammo in a home with a small child like this, much less a firearm.
I’m willing to bet he used the same method of hiding his gun from the OP when he lived there, and considering he has serious depression and managed to forget about 3000 rounds of (valuable) ammo and a scope, I’m not real confident in his ability to remember whether his kid has access to his gun.
And what are you basing that on? He wasn’t hiding the ammo, he was storing it.
Will somebody please explain WTF is wrong with storing boxes of ammo in a garage?
People keep cans of gas, kerosene, diesel, etc. in garages which is far more volatile than ammo that is sitting safely in a case. Maybe he stored (not hid) the ammo in the garage to keep it out of the living quarters. Either way, having boxes of ammo is not the same as having a loaded gun laying around. Some of you are getting your bowels in an uproar over nothing.
And .22 ammo is usually used for target shooting. What’s wrong with that?
PK, you are getting into very personal territory, and as little as I ike my ex, I’m not going to lay out his personal history for your amusement. There are some folks in this thread who know more about the situation than you do. Let it go.
The evidence would seem to indicate that he bought a gun after agreeing not to do so, and then hid the fact. Then he irresponsibly forgot about the accoutrements and left them behind. This thread was opened to establish whether evidence of gun ownership might be available, and the answer is “no.” I’m not sure what else you are hanging onto the conversation - and I suspect the reasons you are doing so are similarly personal, so I won’t ask about them.
Bottom line, the question has been answered and your assumptions are way off base.
