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

Updated August 17, 2026. Quick answer: In Connecticut, an heir needs a state-issued credential before this firearm is lawfully theirs to hold; 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 never mentions inheritance in the sections that govern this. Something has to be filed: 48 hours, counted from the sale, delivery or other transfer of a pistol/revolver. Every answer below is quoted from Connecticut’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 Connecticut law settles, in four lines

What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in Connecticut: 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

An heir needs a state-issued credential before this firearm is lawfully theirs to hold. In Connecticut that answer reads yes. The section that settles it is quoted here rather than paraphrased:

No person may purchase or receive any pistol or revolver unless such person holds a valid permit to carry a pistol or revolver issued pursuant to subsection (b) of section 29-28, a valid permit to sell firearms at retail issued pursuant to subsection (a) of section 29-28 or a valid eligibility certificate for a pistol or revolver issued pursuant to section 29-36f or is a federal marshal, parole officer or peace officer.

— Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-33(b) (pistols/revolvers); § 29-37a(c) (long guns)

Does anyone have to be told, and by when

48 hours, and the number is the smaller half of the answer. What it counts from is the sale, delivery or other transfer of a pistol/revolver — which is the part a comparison table drops and the part that decides whether the deadline has already passed. It goes to Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection (Commissioner) and the police chief (or, where none, the chief executive officer / designated resident state trooper / state police troop) of the municipality where the transferee resides.

Any person, firm or corporation that sells, delivers or otherwise transfers any firearm pursuant to section 29-33 or 29-37a, shall contact the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection to access the database established under this section and receive an authorization number for such sale, delivery or transfer.

— Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-33(e) (pistol/revolver receipt-filing); § 29-37a(d) (long-gun receipt-filing); § 29-36l(f) (authorization-number requirement, both classes)

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 Connecticut the section that settles it reads:

The prospective transferor and prospective transferee comply with the provisions of subsection (d) of this section and the prospective transferor has obtained an authorization number from the Commissioner of Emergency Services and Public Protection for such sale, delivery or transfer; or

— Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-36l(f) (authorization number obtainable by ’any person, firm or corporation’); § 29-37a(e)(1) (long-gun private-party direct path)

What the code says about inheritance itself

The code never mentions inheritance in the sections that govern this. That is not the same as hostility, and it is not the same as safety either. Where nothing regulates the transfer, there is nothing for an heir to be exempted from — and nothing standing in the way if the legislature writes a rule next session.

The sentence that answers this is the one already quoted above, under Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card?. Conn. Gen. Stat. ch. 529, §§ 29-27 to 29-38 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 Connecticut

• Connecticut runs the shortest clock in the country and it is really two clocks: 48 hours for a pistol or revolver, 24 hours for a long gun, both counted from the transfer itself. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-33(e)
• There is also a step before the transfer, not just after it. The transferor has to obtain an authorisation number from the state first, which makes the sequence clear-then-transfer-then-file. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-33(e)
• The verb in the statute is receive, not purchase. That one word is what brings an heir inside a section that reads at first glance like a rule about buying guns. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-33(b)
• Connecticut’s legislature does know how to write an inheritance exemption — there is one in the chapter, in the serial-number statute for home-made firearms. It is not in the sections that decide whether an heir may take possession. Conn. Gen. Stat. ch. 529, §§ 29-27 to 29-38
• One tension is left standing rather than smoothed over: the pistol procedure refers to a federal transfer document that in ordinary practice only a dealer generates, and no state guidance page was reachable to resolve it. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 29-36l(f)

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.

The other states with their own page: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Hawaii, Maryland, Washington, 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.