Firearms after a death

The point of this phase is that nothing leaves the house yet. In New York there is a clock running from the death itself.

1. Secure them, and do not distribute anything

   Lock them, unloaded, somewhere one person controls, and separate the ammunition. Houses fill with visitors in the week after a death and firearms are the objects most likely to walk out informally as a keepsake. Nothing here requires deciding who inherits — it requires that nobody takes possession before that is decided.

   Every later step assumes the executor still knows where each firearm is. An informal handover in the first week is also the exact transaction the federal prohibited-person rule punishes, made before anyone has thought about it.

2. Write down what is there

   Make, model, calibre and serial number for each one, with a photograph. That list is what tells you which route each firearm takes, and it is also the record the estate's inventory needs. A firearm with no serial number is a fact worth recording as such.^{Source 3}

   Do after: secure them

   The National Firearms Act route turns on whether a particular item is registered to the person who died, which cannot be answered without the serial numbers.

3. In New York, note the date of death — the executor has fifteen days

   New York gives an executor, administrator or other lawful possessor a defined window to hold the weapons and no more. If they are not lawfully disposed of inside it, they go to the state police superintendent, the county sheriff or the local police head. This is not confiscation — the same paragraph lets the executor get them released to a named licensed person later on a written request — but it is a real deadline that starts while the funeral is still being arranged.^{Source 9}

   Do after: secure them

   It is the shortest deadline in this area by a wide margin, nothing prompts it, and the second clock behind it destroys the property after a year.

1. Separate out anything registered with the ATF

   Suppressors, short-barrelled rifles and shotguns, and machine guns are National Firearms Act items and travel on a different route from everything else. They are usually accompanied by a stamped ATF form in the paperwork, which is what registration looks like. An executor may possess a registered NFA firearm through probate without that counting as a transfer at all — so there is time, but not unlimited time.^{Source 3}

   Do after: count and photograph

2. Check whether the will or a separate list gives them to anyone

   Firearms are tangible personal property, so a separate written list can dispose of them where the state allows one — subject to everything on this page about who may receive. Where there is no will and no list, they fall into the residue and pass by intestacy like the rest of the contents.

   Do after: count and photograph

1. Hard to undo

   Ask, honestly, whether the person receiving it may have one

   This is the step that carries personal criminal exposure and the only one on this page that cannot be undone. Federal law makes it unlawful to sell or otherwise dispose of a firearm to someone the transferor has reasonable cause to believe falls into one of nine categories — including a felony conviction or indictment, unlawful drug use, a qualifying domestic-violence restraining order, and a domestic-violence misdemeanour. A gift out of an estate is a disposal. The standard is not certainty; it is reasonable cause to believe.^{Source 2}

   Families know things about each other that meet this standard and do not think of them as legal facts. If there is any doubt, a licensed dealer runs the background check and the doubt stops being the executor's problem.

2. Use the inheritance exception where it applies

   Federal law generally bars a private transfer across state lines, and inheritance is carved out of both halves of that bar: the executor may deliver an inherited firearm to an heir in another state, and the heir may bring it home. The condition attached to both halves is the same one — the heir must be permitted to have that firearm under the law of the state where the heir lives. The exception excuses the interstate step. It does not excuse the heir's own state.^{Source 1}

   Do after: prohibited person check

3. Then satisfy the state — which is where the four states stop agreeing

   The federal exception is a ceiling, not a floor. California routes almost every transfer through a licensed dealer and lets inheritance out of that only for a narrow list of relatives, with a safety certificate obtained first and a report filed after. New York runs its fifteen-day clock. Arizona and Florida have each legislated to keep cities out of the field, so there is one rulebook rather than two. The comparison below sets out what each requires.^{Source 5Source 9Source 4Source 8}

   Do after: prohibited person check

4. File the ATF application for any registered item before probate closes

   To a beneficiary of the estate it is an ATF Form 5 and there is no transfer tax — the estate is named as transferor and the executor signs on behalf of the person who died. To anyone who is not a beneficiary it is an ATF Form 4 and the tax is payable. Either application goes in with proof of appointment, the death certificate, a copy of the will if there is one, and anything else bearing on the disposition.^{Source 3}

   Do after: identify nfa

   The deadline is written as an event, not a date — no later than the close of probate — so it is invisible on a calendar and easy to leave until the estate is being wound up.