Making the sale legal

[Justang]

Here's the story. I work with a guy whose mother-in-law just died, and father in law has severe dementia and lives in a nursing home. When he went to clean out their house he found a Beretta under one of the beds. It looked as if it had been there for years. My co-worker is not a gun person, and nor is the family. Not that they are against them, it's just not their thing. Turns out it's the Father's gun that nobody knew about. They just wanted to get rid of it, so they called the local police and they were given another number. Long story short, timing was off and they just brought the gun home with them (No. Cal to So. Cal). He's telling me the story, so I offer to buy it. Heck, I've always wanted 9mm, but not bad enough that I wouldn't buy other guns first. He's selling it to me for super cheap too!

So at this point we need to know how to make this transaction legal? The father lives over 400+miles away. And he's actually my co-workers wifes step-father. So how do we go about this? help.

thanks in advance.

 

[Trebor]

Contact a laywer familiar with the law in your state. I wouldn't rely on advice on a web board for a question like this.

 

[Jim March]

I actually do know something about this.

First off, California has one halfway decent piece of law: a gun can be legally transferred without any paperwork at all within a family so long as it moves "up or down" between just one generation. So at this point the gun has moved down one generation to your buddy's wife but since CA is a community property state it belongs to both members of the marriage.

So the transfer so far is legal.

To get it legally in your name, you and either of the two owners (the married couple) need to go to a gun shop. They'll do the transfer paperwork for a set fee ($25 last I heard), do the background check and sit on the gun for 10 days during the waiting period. You'll also need the California "gun buyer's card" if you don't already have one - the gun shop will have the quiz sheet and can cut you the "license" right there.

That at least is my understanding. Feel free to call the California DOJ Firearms Division and explain just what you've told us - but OMIT the names of the current owners of the gun, just in case something is "wonky" about how the gun was transferred from the deceased to the family members...but I doubt there's a problem, I think by dumb luck it happened legally. (If it was the wife's grandfather who died there might be a problem.)

http://caag.state.ca.us/firearms/index.html

http://caag.state.ca.us/contact/index.htm - it's generally possible to get somebody from the firearms division on the phone, and they're *usually* accurate. Usually.

Oh. One more thing: what's the magazine capacity? You may need to go score smaller mags .