Howdy all,
I'm a resident of Texas and my uncle lives in California. He's a great guy and I love him dearly, but sometimes he does things that are absolutely infuriating, like hide stage IV metastatic cancer until he's so sick that he can't get out of bed and needs hospice care. I'm flying out tomorrow evening to spend a few days with him and will be returning this weekend.
The marginally less dim side of things is that he has said that I can have his guns, which include a few pistols and a rifle or two. While I try to take my time and figure things out for myself, legal code is just so complex and obtuse that even non-dyslexics have difficulty understanding it. I would like some advice (ideally with references to pertinent legal code) from you guys about how to transfer his guns to me without becoming a criminal.
From what I understand, since my uncle is still alive and doesn't have an official written will, any transfer of firearms from him to me would be considered a gift between residents of different states and therefore require an FFL in the receiving state (i.e. my state, Texas) to process the transaction.
Is this correct, or does the fact that I am visiting him and could potentially take the firearms with me back change the requirement for an FFL (I think that I've read somewhere that picking up in person and driving home firearms is legal)?
If I do need to go through a Texas FFL, how do I go about shipping firearms? The laws I've read seem kind of hard to understand. It seems that shipping a rifle or shotgun through the mail is no problem, but shipping handguns requires using a "private common or contract carrier" and needs to be shipped from an FFL to an FFL?
From everything I've read it sounds like the best option to get the guns to Texas is to pick them up in California, take them to an FFL, and then ask the CA FFL to ship them to another FFL in Texas, but if there's any way to simplify and make the process cheaper, then I would love to hear it.
I hope you all have a good day,
Aleksei
I'm a resident of Texas and my uncle lives in California. He's a great guy and I love him dearly, but sometimes he does things that are absolutely infuriating, like hide stage IV metastatic cancer until he's so sick that he can't get out of bed and needs hospice care. I'm flying out tomorrow evening to spend a few days with him and will be returning this weekend.
The marginally less dim side of things is that he has said that I can have his guns, which include a few pistols and a rifle or two. While I try to take my time and figure things out for myself, legal code is just so complex and obtuse that even non-dyslexics have difficulty understanding it. I would like some advice (ideally with references to pertinent legal code) from you guys about how to transfer his guns to me without becoming a criminal.
From what I understand, since my uncle is still alive and doesn't have an official written will, any transfer of firearms from him to me would be considered a gift between residents of different states and therefore require an FFL in the receiving state (i.e. my state, Texas) to process the transaction.
Is this correct, or does the fact that I am visiting him and could potentially take the firearms with me back change the requirement for an FFL (I think that I've read somewhere that picking up in person and driving home firearms is legal)?
If I do need to go through a Texas FFL, how do I go about shipping firearms? The laws I've read seem kind of hard to understand. It seems that shipping a rifle or shotgun through the mail is no problem, but shipping handguns requires using a "private common or contract carrier" and needs to be shipped from an FFL to an FFL?
From everything I've read it sounds like the best option to get the guns to Texas is to pick them up in California, take them to an FFL, and then ask the CA FFL to ship them to another FFL in Texas, but if there's any way to simplify and make the process cheaper, then I would love to hear it.
I hope you all have a good day,
Aleksei