Updated August 17, 2026. Quick answer: In New Jersey, no state permit, licence, card or certificate stands between an heir and an inherited firearm; on the dealer question, it depends, and in practice it depends on who the heir is rather than on what the firearm is; and on inheritance itself, the code names inheritance in so many words and carves it out. Nothing has to be filed with anyone. Every answer below is quoted from New Jersey’s own code with the section named and linked, because this is a subject where being roughly right is not a category that exists.
What New Jersey law settles, in four lines
| Question | What the code says | Section |
|---|---|---|
| Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card? | No | N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(j) |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | No | N.J.S.A. 2C:39 (Ch. 39 |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | Depends | N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(a)(2), (b)(2), (j), (n) |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | Named expressly | N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(j) |
What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in New Jersey: the person who died and the person inheriting are in the same state, and the firearm is an ordinary rifle, shotgun, pistol or revolver. Machine guns, suppressors, short-barrelled rifles and anything else registered under the National Firearms Act run on a separate federal track that is not this page, and neither is moving a firearm across a state line. The federal layer is set out separately.
Does the heir need a permit, licence or card
No state permit, licence, card or certificate stands between an heir and an inherited firearm. In New Jersey that answer reads no. The section that settles it is quoted here rather than paraphrased:
Notwithstanding any other provision of this section concerning the transfer, receipt or acquisition of a firearm, a permit to purchase or a firearms purchaser identification card shall not be required for the passing of a firearm upon the death of an owner thereof to the owner’s heir or legatee, whether the same be by testamentary bequest or by the laws of intestacy.
Does anyone have to be told, and by when
No. New Jersey has no report, registration or notification duty for an heir who acquires a firearm this way. That is an absence established by reading the chapters through, not an unanswered question — the sections searched are named in the sources below, and what is quoted here is the nearest provision they contain.
The sentence that answers this is the one already quoted above, under Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card?. N.J.S.A. 2C:39 (Ch. 39 settles both questions in the same breath, which is itself part of the answer — there is no separate inheritance provision to read.
Does it have to go through a licensed dealer
It depends, and in practice it depends on who the heir is rather than on what the firearm is. The claim that an inherited firearm always has to be transferred through a licensed dealer is not true as a flat statement in any state in this table, and in New Jersey the section that settles it reads:
A person who is not a licensed retail dealer and sells, gives, transfers, assigns, or otherwise disposes of, or receives, purchases or otherwise acquires a handgun pursuant to this section shall conduct the transaction through a licensed retail dealer.
What the code says about inheritance itself
The code names inheritance in so many words and carves it out. An express carve-out is worth more than the convenience it buys today: it is a decision somebody made about heirs, and it survives the next amendment to the rule it sits in.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this section concerning the transfer, receipt or acquisition of a firearm, a permit to purchase or a firearms purchaser identification card shall not be required for the passing of a firearm upon the death of an owner thereof to the owner’s heir or legatee, whether the same be by testamentary bequest or by the laws of intestacy. The person who shall so receive, or acquire the firearm shall, however, be subject to all other provisions of this chapter. If the heir or legatee of the firearm does not qualify to possess or carry it, the heir or legatee may retain ownership of the firearm for the purpose of sale for a period not exceeding 180 days, or for a further limited period as may be approved by the chief law enforcement officer of the municipality in which the heir or legatee resides or the superintendent, provided that the firearm is in the custody of the chief law enforcement officer of the municipality or the superintendent during that period.
What is specific to New Jersey
- New Jersey gave this its own titled subsection. The heading in the statute is literally firearms passing to heirs or legatees, and it covers a will and an intestacy equally. N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(j)
- The carve-out is from the paperwork, not from eligibility. An heir who cannot lawfully possess the firearm keeps ownership for a bounded period to sell it, while the firearm itself sits in police custody. N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(j)
- The dealer question turns on a statutory family list, and New Jersey’s is one of the broadest in the country — it reaches stepsiblings, grandparents and civil-union partners. N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(a)(2), (b)(2), (j), (n)
- For an heir outside that list, whether the inheritance clause also switches off the dealer requirement is genuinely unsettled on the face of the statute. This page says so rather than picking the convenient reading. N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(a)(2), (b)(2), (j), (n)
What this page does not tell you
- This is what the statute says, not what a court or a police department has done with it. No case law and no agency guidance was read. Where a code is silent, this page reports silence rather than filling it in.
- City and county rules sit on top and are not here. Several of these states let a city license or register firearms separately, and a local rule can add a step the state code does not mention.
- Who may possess is a separate question from how it transfers. A federal or state bar on possession — a felony conviction, a protective order, an involuntary commitment — attaches to the person and reaches an inherited firearm exactly as it reaches a bought one.
- A gun trust is a different mechanism and is covered separately. What a gun trust does and does not do is its own question, and it is mostly a federal one.
- This is general information, not legal advice. On this subject a wrong step is not a paperwork problem, so the sections are linked for you to read and a probate lawyer in the state is the right next call if anything here is close.
Sources
Every answer on this page comes out of a 51-jurisdiction table built from statute text: 204 cells, 201 of them read from a state’s own code and 3 from an official state publication, with 0 resting on a secondary source of any kind. 175 quotations were machine-checked against the bytes of the page each came from, with 0 failures. 22 of the 204 cells are flagged because the text is verbatim but the date of the copy it came from could not be confirmed at the state’s own site.
| What it supports | Section | Tier | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card? | N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(j) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | N.J.S.A. 2C:39 (Ch. 39, full) and 2C:58 (Ch. 58, full), read against 2C:58-3(j) and 2C:58-3(h) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(a)(2), (b)(2), (j), (n) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | N.J.S.A. 2C:58-3(j) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
The other states with their own page: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maryland, Washington, Michigan, Texas. All 51 jurisdictions are in the by-state table.
General consumer information, not legal advice. State codes are as published by the cited source on 2026-08-17 and change without notice; the statute and a lawyer in the state govern.