Updated August 17, 2026. Quick answer: In Hawaii, 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 names inheritance and then bounds what naming it buys you. Something has to be filed: 5 days, counted from acquisition. Every answer below is quoted from Hawaii’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 Hawaii law settles, in four lines
| Question | What the code says | Section |
|---|---|---|
| Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card? | Yes | HRS § 134-2(a) |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | Yes — 5 days | HRS § 134-3(a)-(b) |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | No | HRS § 134-2(a) |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | Named, but limited | HRS § 134-2(a) |
What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in Hawaii: 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 Hawaii that answer reads yes. The section that settles it is quoted here rather than paraphrased:
No person shall acquire the ownership of a firearm, whether usable or unusable, serviceable or unserviceable, modern or antique, registered under prior law or by a prior owner or unregistered, either by purchase, gift, inheritance, bequest, or in any other manner, whether procured in the State or imported by mail, express, freight, or otherwise, until the person has first procured from the chief of police of the county of the person’s place of business or, if there is no place of business, the person’s residence or, if there is neither place of business nor residence, the person’s place of sojourn, a permit to acquire the ownership of a firearm as prescribed in this section.
Does anyone have to be told, and by when
5 days, and the number is the smaller half of the answer. What it counts from is acquisition — which is the part a comparison table drops and the part that decides whether the deadline has already passed. It goes to the chief of police of the county of the registrant’s place of business, or residence, or place of sojourn.
Every person who acquires a firearm pursuant to section 134-2 shall register the firearm in the manner prescribed by this section within five days of acquisition.
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 Hawaii the section that settles it reads:
When title to any firearm is acquired by inheritance or bequest, the foregoing permit shall be obtained before taking possession of the firearm; provided that upon presentation of a copy of the death certificate of the owner making the bequest, any heir or legatee may transfer the inherited or bequested firearm directly to a dealer licensed under section 134-31 or licensed by the United States Department of Justice without complying with the requirements of this section.
What the code says about inheritance itself
The code names inheritance and then bounds what naming it buys you. Being named and being released are different things. What follows the naming is the bound — a window that closes, a route that only works one way, or an exemption from the paperwork but not from the licence.
The sentence that answers this is the one already quoted above, under Does it have to go through a licensed dealer?. HRS § 134-2(a) 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 Hawaii
- Hawaii runs the opposite way from the rest of the country. Where other states carve inheritance out of a transfer rule, Hawaii’s permit statute lists inheritance and bequest among the ways of acquiring a firearm that it covers. HRS § 134-2(a)
- There is one carve-out and it only helps an heir who is giving the firearm up: on producing a death certificate, an heir may hand it straight to a licensed dealer without the permit. Keeping it is what the permit is for. HRS § 134-2(a)
- The permit is not the end of it. Registration with the county police chief is a second, separate step on a five-day clock of its own. HRS § 134-3(a)-(b)
- The permit has to be in hand first. The statute says it is obtained before taking possession, which puts the sequence the other way round from every state where an heir takes the firearm home and then does the paperwork. HRS § 134-2(a)
- Hawaii amended this section in 2024 and the amendment does not touch any of this. Act 21 added a hunter-education carve-out from the training requirement; the inheritance sentence is untouched, and this page quotes the live section rather than a mirror of it. HRS § 134-2(a)
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.
| What it supports | Section | Tier | Read on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Does the heir need a state permit, licence or card? | HRS § 134-2(a) (Permits to acquire) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does the acquisition have to be reported? | HRS § 134-3(a)-(b) (Registration, mandatory, exceptions) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does it have to go through a licensed dealer? | HRS § 134-2(a) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
| Does the statute name inheritance at all? | HRS § 134-2(a) | statute | 2026-08-17 |
The other states with their own page: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, 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.