Inheriting a Firearm in Minnesota: Permit, Report, Dealer and What the Code Says About Inheritance

Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: In Minnesota, the answer splits on the type of firearm. An ordinary long gun, a standard hunting rifle or full-length shotgun, is outside the state’s permit, report and dealer machinery entirely: no permit, no report, no dealer, for any heir. A pistol or one of Minnesota’s specifically listed semiautomatic military-style assault-weapon models is different: the general rule requires either dealer facilitation or a transferee permit, but an express exemption removes both requirements for the transfer into the estate and for the final distribution to an immediate-family heir (spouse, domestic partner, parent, child, sibling, grandparent or grandchild). An heir outside that family list receiving a pistol or listed assault-weapon type does not get the exemption and needs dealer facilitation or a permit like any other private-party transfer. Every answer below is quoted from Minnesota’s own statutes with the section named and linked.

What Minnesota law settles, in four lines

What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in Minnesota: the person who died and the person inheriting are in the same jurisdiction, 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

An ordinary long gun (a standard hunting rifle or full-length shotgun) is outside this entire statutory scheme. Minnesota’s permit and background-check law reaches only a “pistol” (defined broadly to include any handgun and any short-barreled shotgun or rifle) or a “semiautomatic military-style assault weapon” (a closed, named list of specific models, not ordinary hunting rifles or shotguns). If the inherited firearm is a regular long gun, no permit of any kind applies to receiving it.

For a pistol or a listed assault-weapon type, the law offers two compliant paths, and inheritance is separately exempted from both. An unlicensed-to-unlicensed transfer ordinarily needs either dealer facilitation or a transferee permit:

An unlicensed person is prohibited from transferring a pistol or semiautomatic military-style assault weapon to any other unlicensed person, unless: (1) the transfer is made through a firearms dealer as provided for in subdivision 3; or (2) the transferee presents a valid transferee permit issued under section 624.7131 and a current state or federally issued identification.

Source: Minn. Stat. § 624.7134, subd. 2, 7; § 624.712, subd. 2, 7

But a separate provision expressly exempts a transfer to an executor, administrator, trustee or personal representative occurring by operation of law at death, and a further provision exempts a transfer between immediate family members (spouse, domestic partner, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild). Together those two exemptions cover the decedent-to-estate step and the estate-to-heir step for an immediate-family heir. An heir who is not immediate family, a niece, nephew, cousin, friend or unrelated legatee, does not benefit from either exemption for that final distribution, and would need either dealer facilitation or a transferee permit to lawfully receive a pistol or listed assault-weapon type.

Does anyone have to be told, and by when

No. Minnesota’s transfer-reporting statute would ordinarily require the transferor to report a pistol or assault-weapon-type transfer to local police within three days, but a stand-alone carve-out excludes “transfers at death” entirely, alongside court-ordered and involuntary transfers.

this section shall not apply to transfers of antique firearms as curiosities or for their historical significance or value, transfers to or between federally licensed firearms dealers, transfers by order of court, involuntary transfers, transfers at death

Source: Minn. Stat. § 624.7132, subd. 12

This carve-out is broader than the executor-specific language in the companion background-check statute: it is written as a category, not tied to who receives the firearm, so it reads as covering the eventual distribution from the estate to the heir, not only the decedent-to-estate step. As with the permit question, this reporting regime never applied to ordinary long guns in the first place.

Does it have to go through a licensed dealer

No dealer step for an ordinary long gun, and none for a pistol or assault-weapon-type firearm passing to immediate family. The statute expressly excludes two inheritance-adjacent transfers from its dealer/background-check requirement: a transfer to an executor, administrator, trustee or personal representative occurring by operation of law, and a transfer between immediate family members.

a transfer to an executor, administrator, trustee, or personal representative of an estate or a trust that occurs by operation of law upon the death of the former owner of the firearm

Source: Minn. Stat. § 624.7134, subd. 7(4)-(5)

Read together, the transfer into the estate is exempt outright, and the final distribution out of the estate is exempt when the heir is a spouse, domestic partner, parent, child, sibling, grandparent or grandchild of the decedent. An heir outside that list receiving a pistol or listed assault-weapon type would need dealer facilitation or a transferee permit, exactly as an ordinary private-party sale would.

What the code says about inheritance itself

Named expressly, in two separate statutes, but the exemption is scoped to the pistol/assault-weapon machinery it sits inside. Minnesota’s reporting statute excludes “transfers at death” as a category, and its background-check statute separately excludes transfers to an executor, administrator, trustee or personal representative occurring by operation of law at death. Neither exemption needed to reach an ordinary long gun, because long guns were never inside this regulatory scheme in the first place.

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 beyond what is cited above. Where a code is silent or a question is unresolved, this page reports that rather than filling it in.
• City and county rules sit on top and are not here. 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, and the four cells for Minnesota are individually cited below.

All 51 jurisdictions are in the by-state table, with the same four cells for every state side by side.

General consumer information, not legal advice. State codes are as published by the cited source and change without notice; the statute and a lawyer in the state govern.