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

Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Pennsylvania needs no permit for an heir to possess an inherited firearm at home, but its transfer-report and dealer requirements turn entirely on who the heir is, not on the fact that the transfer happens by inheritance. A spouse, parent, child, grandparent or grandchild of the decedent can receive the firearm directly, no dealer, no report to the State Police. A sibling, a more distant relative, or an unrelated legatee does not get that exemption and must go through a licensed importer, manufacturer, dealer or county sheriff’s office, exactly as an ordinary private sale would. Pennsylvania’s code never uses the word inheritance anywhere in this statute; the carve-out is built around family relationship, not around the legal act of inheriting. Every answer below is quoted from Pennsylvania’s own code with the section named and linked.

What Pennsylvania law settles, in four lines

What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in Pennsylvania: 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

No. Pennsylvania’s License to Carry Firearms is a requirement only for carrying a firearm concealed on the person or in a vehicle; it expressly excepts a person’s “place of abode or fixed place of business.”

any person who carries a firearm in any vehicle or any person who carries a firearm concealed on or about his person, except in his place of abode or fixed place of business, without a valid and lawfully issued license under this chapter commits a felony of the third degree

Source: 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 6106(a)(1)

An heir who keeps an inherited handgun or long gun in the home needs no license or permit to possess it. Pennsylvania’s separate transfer-control statute, covered next, imposes a delivery delay and a background check on the transaction itself, but not a state-issued card the receiving party must hold.

Does anyone have to be told, and by when

The exemption is keyed to who the heir is, not to the fact that the transfer happens by inheritance. Pennsylvania’s transfer statute exempts only a narrow relationship list from its background-check and reporting machinery:

The provisions of this section shall not apply to transfers between spouses or to transfers between a parent and child or to transfers between grandparent and grandchild.

Source: 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 6111(b)(1), (c)

An heir who is the decedent’s spouse, parent, child, grandparent or grandchild needs no report filed with the Pennsylvania State Police for that receipt, regardless of whether the transfer happens by will, intestate succession or otherwise. An heir outside that list, notably including a sibling, a more distant relative, or an unrelated legatee, is not covered: the transfer must instead be processed at the place of business of a licensed importer, manufacturer, dealer or county sheriff’s office, which forwards a record of sale to the State Police within 14 days of the sale. The statute never defines a separate inheritance trigger for that 14-day window, so this page does not guess one.

Does it have to go through a licensed dealer

Pennsylvania’s transfer-control law sweeps in essentially all ordinary handguns, rifles and shotguns, not handguns only (the statute’s own definition covers pistols and revolvers under 15 inches, shotguns under 18 inches, rifles under 16 inches, or any firearm under 26 inches overall). The same spouse, parent-child and grandparent-grandchild exemption that removes the reporting duty also removes this dealer step:

Any person who is not a licensed importer, manufacturer or dealer and who desires to sell or transfer a firearm to another unlicensed person shall do so only upon the place of business of a licensed importer, manufacturer, dealer or county sheriff’s office

Source: 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 6111(c), (f)(2)

If the heir is outside that exemption list, a sibling, a more distant relative or an unrelated legatee, the bequest must run through the place of business of a licensed importer, manufacturer, dealer or county sheriff’s office, exactly as an ordinary private sale would.

What the code says about inheritance itself

Not named, and this matters for exactly who gets the exemption. A full read of § 6111 finds no use of inherit, inherited, inheritance, bequest, devise, intestate, descent, decedent, estate, executor or personal representative anywhere in the section. The only carve-out is keyed to the recipient’s relationship to the transferor, spouse, parent, child, grandparent, grandchild, not to the mechanism of transfer. A sibling or an unrelated legatee inheriting the same firearm through the same estate gets no carve-out at all, even though the transfer is unquestionably by inheritance, because the exemption was never written around that legal act 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 Pennsylvania 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.