Posted: 4/17/2009 6:51:45 AM EDT
| I'm asking this for a friend of mine because I wasn't able to answer his question. His grandfather passed and left a lot of firearms to his uncle, however his uncle already has a nice collection and doesn't need most of them, so he has offered to give some of them to my friend. The legal question is this, his uncle lives in Pennsylvania. Is there any issue with him being given the guns in PA, and driving them back to his home in VA? He doesn't have to do anything special to be able to cross state lines with them, does he? Any other issues he would need to be aware of with something like this? He was asking me about registration and what not, and I told him VA doesn't have any registration, so he should be fine there. He was also wondering if there is any difference with bringing a handgun across state lines compared to a rifle/shotgun. Any help you guys can provide with this would be greatly appreciated. |
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Interstate transfer of weapons between individuals requires an FFL to be legal. Your friend can not drive to PA and pick them up - they need to be delivered to an FFL in VA, and then he needs to do the paperwork there to complete the transfer. Now - I don't know the odds of getting caught doing it the other way (certainly not high) - but it is not legal to do the normal/easy thing in this situation. Also, a VA resident CAN pick up the long-guns at a PA FFL, eliminating the need to ship. The handguns, however, MUST be shipped to VA.
shooter |
| I would contact a local FFL you might shop at and see if they will offer a "bulk discount" for transferring the weapons. Arrange to have the uncle bring the weapons down, transfer them legally, and everything's good. I would not listen to folks advising you to break weapons laws unless you're interested in losing your RKBA permanently. |
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Quoted:
just put them in car and bring them home. OP wanted a Legal answer. Legally speaking that is the wrong answer. Now had his friends Grand Father given his friend the guns when his friend was still living in PA and the friend brought the guns with him when he moved to VA that would be perfectly legal. 
Since neither VA nor PA have gun registration it would be difficult to prove or disprove the statement, unless all the guns were listed by serial number in the will. |