Updated August 17, 2026. Quick answer: In Washington, no state permit, licence, card or certificate stands between an heir and an inherited firearm; on the dealer question, a dealer is not required — the state does regulate transfers here, and this is not one it routes through a dealer; and on inheritance itself, the code names inheritance and then bounds what naming it buys you. Something has to be filed: 60 days, counted from the death of the former owner of the pistol. Every answer below is quoted from Washington’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 Washington law settles, in four lines
| Question | What the code says | Section |
|---|---|---|
| Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card? | No | RCW 9.41.050 |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | Yes — 60 days | RCW 9.41.113(4)(h) |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | No | RCW 9.41.113(1)-(4)(h) |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | Named, but limited | RCW 9.41.113(4)(h) |
What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in Washington: 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 Washington that answer reads no. There is no section to quote for a rule that does not exist, so what is quoted here is the nearest thing the chapter has — read in full, and searched for the vocabulary of inheritance, before the answer was recorded:
Except in the person’s place of abode or fixed place of business, a person shall not carry a pistol concealed on his or her person without a license to carry a concealed pistol.
Does anyone have to be told, and by when
60 days, and the number is the smaller half of the answer. What it counts from is the death of the former owner of the pistol — which is the part a comparison table drops and the part that decides whether the deadline has already passed. It goes to Washington State Department of Licensing.
(h) A person who (i) acquired a firearm other than a pistol by operation of law upon the death of the former owner of the firearm or (ii) acquired a pistol by operation of law upon the death of the former owner of the pistol within the preceding 60 days. At the end of the 60-day period, the person must either have lawfully transferred the pistol or must have contacted the department of licensing to notify the department that he or she has possession of the pistol and intends to retain possession of the pistol, in compliance with all federal and state laws
Does it have to go through a licensed dealer
A dealer is not required — the state does regulate transfers here, and this is not one it routes through a dealer. 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 Washington the nearest provision the chapter contains reads:
All firearm sales or transfers, in whole or part in this state including without limitation a sale or transfer where either the purchaser or seller or transferee or transferor is in Washington, shall be subject to background checks unless specifically exempted by state or federal law.
What the code says about inheritance itself
The code names inheritance and then bounds what naming it buys you. Being named and being released are different things. What follows the naming is the bound — a window that closes, a route that only works one way, or an exemption from the paperwork but not from the licence.
The sentence that answers this is the one already quoted above, under Does the acquisition have to be reported?. RCW 9.41.113(4)(h) settles both questions in the same breath, which is itself part of the answer — there is no separate inheritance provision to read.
What is specific to Washington
- Washington’s clock is the one to watch in the whole table, because it starts at the death rather than at anything the heir does. It can be most of the way gone before an heir knows the firearm exists. RCW 9.41.113(4)(h)
- The duty is the heir’s own. The statute puts it on the person who acquired the pistol, not on the estate or its personal representative, and neither of those words appears in the section. RCW 9.41.113(4)(h)
- Long guns are outside all of this. Their exemption from the transfer machinery on a death is unconditional, with no clock attached. RCW 9.41.113(4)(h)
- Washington has a purchase permit on the books that is not law yet. The section carries its own future effective date, and it does not reach inheritance in any case. RCW 9.41.050
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? | RCW 9.41.050 (concealed pistol license); RCW 9.41.113 (background-check requirement, ch. 9.41 RCW read in full); RCW 9.41.121 (optional purchase permit, not yet effective) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | RCW 9.41.113(4)(h) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | RCW 9.41.113(1)-(4)(h) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | RCW 9.41.113(4)(h) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
The other states with their own page: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maryland, 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.