Inheriting a Firearm by State: Permits, Reporting Deadlines and the Dealer Rule in All 51 Jurisdictions

Updated August 17, 2026. Quick answer: Somebody died and there is a rifle in the closet or a handgun in a drawer. Four questions decide what you may do with it, and every one of them is answered by state law rather than federal law. Across all 51 jurisdictions: 0 require an ordinary bequest to go through a licensed dealer, 7 require the acquisition to be reported and no two of those start the clock at the same event, 4 require the heir to hold a state credential outright with 8 more where it depends, and 34 never mention inheritance in the sections that govern. The table below is every jurisdiction, with the section each answer was read from.

All 51 jurisdictions, four questions each

What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in one state: 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.

The 7 jurisdictions that want to be told, and the 7 different places their clocks start

This is the column that gets published wrong most often, because it is usually published as a number. A number is not the rule. 7 of 51 jurisdictions require a report at all, and no two of them start the clock at the same event — one starts at a transfer, one at possession, one at the paperwork in the probate file, and one at the death itself. Two of the deadlines can therefore be part-spent before an heir has done anything at all.

• Connecticut. Connecticut’s is the shortest clock in the country, and it is two clocks: 48 hours for a pistol or revolver, 24 hours for a long gun. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-33(e)
• Washington. Washington’s starts at the death itself, which is the only one in the set that can expire before an heir learns the firearm exists. RCW 9.41.113(4)(h)
• District of Columbia. The District’s starts at the executor’s own appointment — an event in the probate file rather than in the gun cabinet. D.C. Official Code § 7-2503.01(a)

A further 3 jurisdictions answer this conditionally: something has to be filed, but only for some firearms or only on a condition the statute attaches, and none of them states a day count. They are marked Depends in the table above.

“It has to go through an FFL” is not true anywhere

The single most repeated claim about inherited firearms is that the transfer has to be run through a federally licensed dealer. As a flat statement it is wrong in every jurisdiction in this table: 0 of 51 require it for an ordinary intrastate bequest. 7 answer it depends, and the thing it almost always depends on is not the firearm — it is who the heir is. Each of those states defines a family list, and the lists do not agree with each other:

• California. California’s family test excludes spouses and siblings from the definition its gift-and-bequest pathway runs on. Cal. Penal Code §§ 31615(a)(1), 27875(a)(4), 27920(a)(2)(B), 27925(b), 31700(b)
• New York. New York’s exempts spouses, domestic partners, children and step-children, so a sibling or a grandchild is outside it. N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 898(1)
• Minnesota. Minnesota’s list is one of the widest — spouses, domestic partners, parents, children, siblings, grandparents and grandchildren — but the scheme it sits in reaches only pistols and listed assault weapons, so an ordinary long gun is outside the question altogether. Minn. Stat. §624.7134, subd. 7(4)-(5)

An heir outside the list in their own state is in the ordinary private-transfer rule, which is what the dealer sentence is really about. A cousin, a friend, an unrelated legatee under a will — those are the people the exemption misses.

Two different kinds of no, and they are not interchangeable

The dealer column carries two negative answers that look identical in a comparison table and mean opposite things. In 15 jurisdictions a private-transfer mandate exists and inheritance sits outside it: somebody wrote a rule and then wrote an heir out of it. In 29 there is no private-transfer mandate at all, so there is nothing for an heir to be outside of.

Today an heir in either kind of state does the same thing, which is why the distinction gets flattened. It matters the moment the law moves: a carve-out survives a new statute, and an absence does not.

One jurisdiction runs the other way

Every other state in this table treats inheritance as the thing to be exempted. One does the reverse and names it in order to capture it.

• Hawaii. Hawaii is the exception that proves what the others are doing: its permit statute names inheritance in order to capture it, not to release it. HRS § 134-2(a)
• Connecticut. Connecticut requires a credential to receive both pistols and long guns and writes no inheritance exception into either section. Conn. Gen. Stat. ch. 529, §§ 29-27 to 29-38

Why 34 of 51 say nothing about inheritance

34 jurisdictions have no inheritance carve-out in the sections that govern this, and the obvious reading of that number is the wrong one. It is not 34 states offering heirs no protection. In most of them there is no permit, report or dealer requirement to be protected from — silence with nothing to be silent about.

The rows worth noticing are the few that regulate the transfer and still say nothing about death. 8 jurisdictions name inheritance and carve it out; 9 name it and then bound what naming it buys — a grace period that expires, a route that only works if you are giving the firearm up, an exemption from the paperwork but not from the licence.

What this page does not tell you

• 22 of the 204 cells carry a currency flag. The text is verbatim; the date of the copy it was read from could not be confirmed at the state’s own site. Those jurisdictions are the ones to re-read before relying on them.
• Nothing here is about carrying. A licence to carry is a different instrument answering a different question, and holding one is not the same as being allowed to receive.
• 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 and how this was built

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.

Where a jurisdiction answers no, that answer was established by reading the governing chapters through and searching them for the vocabulary of inheritance, not by failing to find a rule. 204 of 204 cells carry a value; 0 are blank. The federal rules that apply on top of all of this are set out separately.

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.