This is news to me. I understood that a personal gift from a close relative is similar to an inheritance.
For example, a father giving his son a old hunting rifle. It would have been inherited anyway after the father died.
Fortunately I think most of these gifts within my family were between relatives living in the same state.
In any case, would gifts of guns within a family be a priority for law enforcement?
Probably not, unless you’ve popped up on their radar screen for some reason or another. Let me explain by illustrating a completely hypothetical situation:
Let’s say bobkitty’s husband drives home from Missouri with the gun, and stashes it away in his closet for safekeeping. Sure, he’s committed a crime, but it’s one that’s unlikely to be discovered by law enforcement, and even if they knew about it, as you noted, probably not a priority for law enforcement / prosecution. Maybe they’d let him skate. But, what if, heaven forbid, years from now bobkitty and her husband are comfortably sleeping at night when they hear the glass window in their front room shatter and heavy footfalls start working their way down the hall towards their bedroom. Mr. bobkitty, being understandably alarmed, locks the bedroom door, retrieves the handgun and dials 911 on his cell phone. The intruder jiggles the door handle. Mr. bobkitty yells at him that he has notified the authorities and they’re on their way, that the criminal had best make tracks and beat feet. To Mr. bobkitty’s misfortune, the criminal makes the final in a long series of foolish decisions and kicks the bedroom door in. A knife in his hand glints in the light as he advances into the room. Mr. bobkitty, understandably alarmed, fires to protect himself and bobkitty. The shot proves to be fatal. Shortly afterwards the authorities arrive. They take the intruder’s body away, take a statement from Mr. bobkitty, and take the firearm into evidence, perhaps with a reassurance that this looks like a clearcut case of self defense and shouldn’t be a problem for the bobkittys. A few days later a detective follows up with a phone call, saying that the handgun had been sold to a Mr. FIL in Missouri, and wanting to understand how Mr. bobkitty came to possess it. He explains that it had been a gift from his father. Unbeknownst to the bobkittys, the criminal that had interrupted their slumber was actually the son of a state senator, or the nephew of a Congressman, or for some other reason has become the latest cause celebre of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Angry phone calls are placed to the prosecutor’s office, urging some punishment. Protests break out. Mr. bobkitty is portrayed by the media as a sinister fiend. Perhaps the local sheriff resists this public pressure, noting that it’s a clear-cut case of self defense. But the US Attorney for whatever-district-the-bobkittys-live-in isn’t so understanding. Perhaps he was appointed by a president keen on cracking down on gun crime. Now he’s got a clear-cut case of gun trafficking and an unsympathetic defendant sitting on his desk. It’s a slam dunk. He decides to prosecute. Mr. bobkitty is convicted and sentenced to prison.
Now, maybe all that isn’t terribly likely, but it’s certainly possible, and it’s well worth the hassle of calling a few extra gun stores to find one willing to make the transfer legal rather than risk leaving oneself vulnerable to this particular exploit.
A guns provenance could be a big deal in the states that requires registration.
Or anyone living on a military base. I remember my dad’s rifles were registered because we lived in base housing and were members of the Rod & Gun club.
What law would Mr. bobkitty be convicted of breaking in this scenario?
Seems like that law can be thwarted by answering this question with “Found it in my backyard” no?
If I’m on a jury I would be skeptical of the idea that someone just happened to find a gun in their backyard that was purchased by their father-in-law who lives in another state.
Perhaps I’m more risk-averse than most, but that’s not a gamble I’d take, at least not when there’s a perfectly legal way to accomplish the same thing with some minor procedural headaches.
[Moderating]
Would this hypothetical scenario have been any different if the burglar had been the cause celebre of the Proud Boys? If not, why did you bring it up?
Update: I wandered my unhappy butt (because seriously, screw NoVA traffic) into two official FFL holding places yesterday- the one tagged above in Manassas, and one on a local military installation- in case a face to face interaction yielded something differet. I opened with “I have a situation that I fear I may be getting horrible advice on” and the immediate response from the military rep was “having you been talking to employees at gun stores? Because 99.9% of the time they have no clue what they’re talking about.” :smack:
Result:
When I expressed concern that hubby may be running afoul of ATF trafficking regulations, the military rep asked me which ones I was specifically worried about- I showed him the above referenced websites, and he said that it didn’t apply 1) in family exchanges, 2) due to neither involved state having a registry, and 3) if the gun was not mailed.
Now, it’s possible that I have managed to speak to the (counting on fingers) seven FFL-holding employees in two states who 1) have no clue what they’re talking about, 2) think state regulations trump federal regulations, 3) want to subvert gun regulations, 4) enjoy living dangerously, 5) don’t give a flying fuck about regulations if there’s a workaround to them (like just putting the gun in the trunk and driving it across state lines), 6) want to screw with uneducated potential gun owners in an attempt to get them arrested, 7) any or all of the above. At this point I have no clue. So I am passing all this information along to the hubby, including the paperwork I picked up yesterday, send him links to the airline’s policy and this thread, and will leave it up to him to decide which route to take. At some point either an old pistol will show up in the safe, or I’ll have to bail him out of jail on trafficking charges (or potentially both- who knows at this point??).
Thanks again for the information/insight.
True.
Absolutely not true, only on the receiver’s (husband) end.
Check state laws along the way, but unless you go into DC you don’t need to be too strict along the drive as there are no very restrictive states.
However, I think the above posters are right, while family transfers typically have easier transfers, the different state of residence limits this. NSSF seems to think so, and I assume they’ve done their research:
“Remember, you can never transfer a firearm directly to another person who is a resident of a different state. In that case, you must transfer the firearm through a licensed retailer in the state where the person receiving the gift resides.”
Yes, excepting the transfer rules above. Always use your lock, not a “TSA lock.”
Your points 2 and 3 will likely result in no trouble 99.9% of the time, HurricaneDitka’s scenario relies on a lot of “ifs.” But involving an FFL (again only on the VA end is required) provides some peace of mind.
I’m an FFL dealer. The best, legal way to do this has already been explained on this thread.
Has hubby ever been a resident of Missouri? If he was, isn’t it possible that is when FIL gave him the pistol and he just kept it there for the time being? Then the next time he’s there he can just pick up a gun he has already owned for many years.
The paperwork both the dealers gave me yesterday has a space for information on the firearm, information on the recipient, and a section that details the shipper’s information, with a required line for the shipper’s FFL number. I asked if FIL could send it to them directly and they said no, it needed to be a FFL holder and there would be a transfer fee. shrug Anything to make an extra buck, I suppose.
Is that due to theft concerns, or some other reason?
He was a resident of MO until he retired from the military a couple years back- once he was no longer AD and we decided that we were going to stay in VA a few years til our perma-retirement, he needed to change his residency to VA. So your scenario is actually quite plausible.
If it’s not too much, it saves the hassle of getting an appropriate box, going to UPS, etc.
The ATF wording is:
“A nonlicensee may ship a firearm by carrier to a resident of his or her own state or to a licensee in any state. A common or contract carrier must be used to ship a handgun. In addition, Federal law requires that the carrier be notified that the shipment contains a firearm and prohibits common or contract carriers from requiring or causing any label to be placed on any package indicating that it contains a firearm.”
FIL is a nonlicensee in this case, the FFL is licensee.
The TSA doesn’t always have stringent hiring standards, imagine that, so theft can occur. But even according to the TSA, though they say you can (not should) use their locks:
“Only the passenger should retain the key or combination to the lock unless TSA personnel request the key to open the firearm container to ensure compliance with TSA regulations. You may use any brand or type of lock to secure your firearm case, including TSA-recognized locks.”
You can also technically buy in 2 states if you maintain a home in both, but sounds like that’s no longer the case.
Now that this has (I think) been resolved, I’d like to tell my story, all of which happened in California.
After the Rodney King riots, my dad and stepmom freaked out and bought a couple of S&W .357 pistols, took some lessons and then put the guns away never to be seen again until dad died three years ago. Stepmom gave them to me to sell.
I called a local dealer to me here in town. He told me that I needed to own them to sell them. In order to own them I had to take a test and get licensed to own a handgun in California which I did. It might have been the easiest multiple choice test of my life. Next I had to fill out an inter family transfer form for each gun and wait several weeks until Sacramento replied that they were mine and then finally the dealer would let me sell them in his shop on consignment.
A couple of years passed and I had misplaced the forms and by then that dealer was out of business. So I called a different dealer. He said just bring them in and I’ll make you an offer. He checked some sort of online database to see that they weren’t stolen, made a copy of my driver’s license and gave me cash. I didn’t need the license, the guns were never in my name and for all he knew I swiped them from dad.
I was surprised how easy it was in supposedly gun unfriendly California. A good friend told me that selling is easy, buying is tough. I was also surprised at how different the stories were at the two shops but maybe I shouldn’t have been.
Did the first dealer charge you for the test and forms?
There might have been a small nominal fee for the test or for the card after I passed the test. I don’t recall.
Don’t know about the past, but the FSC test is $25.