Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Vermont needs no permit to possess a firearm and imposes no reporting duty on an heir. The one genuinely open question is whether a bequest to someone outside the immediate family has to go through a licensed dealer’s background check: the statute’s own definition of a regulated “Transfer” is limited to sale, trade or gift, which arguably does not reach a transfer by death at all, but no Vermont court decision resolves that question either way. For a transfer between immediate family members, spouse, parent, child, sibling, grandparent, grandchild and their step and great-grand equivalents, an express exemption removes the dealer step regardless of how that definitional question comes out. This page reports the ambiguity honestly rather than picking a side for you. Every answer below is quoted from Vermont’s own statutes with the section named and linked.
What Vermont law settles, in four lines
| Question | What the code says | Section |
|---|---|---|
| Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card? | No | 13 V.S.A. §§ 4006, 4017, 4019, 4019a |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | No | 13 V.S.A. § 4006 |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | Genuinely unresolved outside immediate family | 13 V.S.A. § 4019(a)(2), (a)(7), (f)(3) |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | Partial, through relationship and definition, not by name | 13 V.S.A. § 4019(a)(7), (f)(3) |
What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in Vermont: 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. Vermont is a constitutional-carry state with no state-issued carry or possession permit of any kind. The chapter’s dealer-facilitation and background-check machinery, covered next, requires a licensed dealer to facilitate certain transfers and run a background check, but that is a transactional check, not a license issued to the heir. No section of the chapter creates a receipt or possession permit, card or certificate for an ordinary individual.
Does anyone have to be told, and by when
No. The only firearm-transaction recordkeeping duty in Vermont’s chapter binds pawnbrokers and retail merchants dealing in firearms, not an heir, executor or personal representative receiving a firearm by bequest or intestate succession.
All pawnbrokers and retail merchants dealing in firearms shall keep a record book in which they shall record the sale by them of all revolvers and pistols, and the purchase by them of all secondhand revolvers and pistols.
Source: 13 V.S.A. § 4006
No section requires an heir to report, register or notify a state or local agency that they received an inherited firearm.
Does it have to go through a licensed dealer
This is a genuine statutory ambiguity, flagged rather than resolved by guesswork. Vermont’s dealer-facilitation and background-check statute regulates something it calls a “Transfer,” and defines that term exhaustively:
“Transfer” means to transfer ownership of a firearm by means of sale, trade, or gift.
Sale, trade or gift, on its face, does not obviously include a transfer by death, will or intestate succession, an involuntary transfer by operation of law rather than a voluntary act by the decedent. That reading would put an inherited firearm outside § 4019 entirely, by definition, not by an express exemption. Separately, and regardless of that definitional question, § 4019(f)(3) expressly exempts a transfer between “immediate family members,” defined broadly to include spouse, parent, stepparent, child, stepchild, sibling, stepsibling, grandparent, step-grandparent, grandchild, step-grandchild, great-grandparent and great-grandchild (with their “step” equivalents). For a bequest between immediate family members as defined, no dealer facilitation is required under either theory. For a bequest to someone outside that list, a friend, cousin, niece, nephew or unrelated legatee, neither the family exemption nor any other listed exemption applies by its terms, and whether the definitional argument (that inheritance is not a “sale, trade, or gift” and so is not a regulated “Transfer” at all) actually controls is unresolved: no Vermont court decision on point was found. This page reports that as an open question rather than picking an answer for you.
What the code says about inheritance itself
Partial, and never named directly. Vermont’s transfer statute contains no clause using the words inherit, bequest, devise, intestate, descent, decedent, estate, executor or personal representative anywhere in chapter 85. Two features of the statute’s own text functionally cover most inheritance scenarios anyway: the “Transfer” definition’s limit to sale, trade or gift, which may not reach a transfer by operation of law at all, and the immediate-family exemption, which covers the relationships through which the large majority of estates pass.
“Transfer” means to transfer ownership of a firearm by means of sale, trade, or gift.
Source: 13 V.S.A. § 4019(a)(7), (f)(3)
Neither provision names bequest or intestate succession as such, and the family exemption is keyed to relationship, not to the estate-transfer mechanism, so a bequest to a non-family legatee is not clearly covered by either route.
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 Vermont are individually cited below.
| What it supports | Section | Tier | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card? | 13 V.S.A. §§ 4006, 4017, 4019, 4019a | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | 13 V.S.A. § 4006 | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | 13 V.S.A. § 4019(a)(2), (a)(7), (f)(3) | statute | 2026-09-04 |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | 13 V.S.A. § 4019(a)(7), (f)(3) | statute | 2026-09-04 |
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.