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

Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Oregon has the most unsettled law in this table. Ballot Measure 114’s permit-to-purchase requirement is on the books but has never taken effect: it was enjoined by a circuit court, the Court of Appeals upheld it as constitutional in March 2025, and the case is now before the Oregon Supreme Court, argued in November 2025 and undecided as of this update; the Legislature separately pushed the earliest possible effective date to January 1, 2028 regardless of that outcome. Separately from the permit question, Oregon’s transfer law requires a dealer-run background check for most private transfers, but carves out a death-of-owner transfer when the estate’s own personal representative or testamentary trustee handles it and the heir is a spouse or domestic partner, parent or stepparent, child or stepchild, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, aunt or uncle, first cousin, niece or nephew, or the spouse or domestic partner of any of those. A bequest to anyone outside that list still needs the dealer step. Every answer below is quoted from Oregon’s own statutes, with the permit question’s current litigation status separately sourced and dated.

What Oregon law settles, in four lines

What this covers. An ordinary estate transfer in Oregon: 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

Not right now, and this is a genuinely moving target. Oregon voters approved Ballot Measure 114 in November 2022, which would require a fingerprinted, background-checked permit-to-purchase before acquiring any firearm, including one received as an heir. The permit requirement was blocked by a Harney County circuit court injunction shortly after passage and has never taken effect.

A person may apply for a permit-to-purchase a firearm or firearms under this section to the police chief or county sheriff with jurisdiction over the residence of the person making the application

Source: ORS 166.505; Oregon Court of Appeals, Arnold v. Kotek, 338 Or App 556 (2025)

The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed that injunction in March 2025, holding Measure 114 constitutional under the Oregon Constitution, but the plaintiffs appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court, which heard oral argument on November 6, 2025 and had not issued a ruling as of this page’s own update. Separately, the Oregon Legislature moved the measure’s earliest possible effective date to January 1, 2028, regardless of how the Supreme Court rules. As of September 4, 2026, no permit-to-purchase requirement applies to receiving an inherited firearm in Oregon, but that could change, and a reader in Oregon should confirm current enforcement status before relying on this page.

Does anyone have to be told, and by when

Oregon’s default rule requires every private firearm transfer to go through a licensed gun dealer, who runs a background check with the Department of State Police before releasing the firearm. This is Oregon’s functional stand-in for a transfer report: a pre-transfer clearance rather than a post-transfer filing.

a transferor may not transfer a firearm to a transferee unless the transfer is completed through a gun dealer as described in subsection (3) of this section.

Source: ORS 166.435(2)-(4)

Two exemptions matter here: a close-relative exemption (spouse or domestic partner, parent or stepparent, child or stepchild, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, aunt or uncle, first cousin, niece or nephew, or the spouse or domestic partner of any of those), and a death-of-owner exemption layered on top of the same relative list. An ordinary bequest to one of those relatives, conducted or facilitated by the estate’s personal representative or a testamentary trustee, needs no dealer visit and no background check. A bequest to anyone outside that list, a friend, an unrelated heir, a more distant relative, still needs the dealer-facilitated background check.

Does it have to go through a licensed dealer

Two conditions both have to hold for the dealer step to fall away. Oregon’s exemption for death-of-owner transfers only applies when the transfer is formally conducted or facilitated by the estate’s personal representative or a trust’s testamentary trustee, and the recipient is one of the relatives named in the exemption list.

The transfer of a firearm that occurs because of the death of the firearm owner, provided that: (A) The transfer is conducted or facilitated by a personal representative, as defined in ORS 111.005, or a trustee of a trust created in a will; and (B) The transferee is related to the deceased firearm owner

Source: ORS 166.435(4)(c)-(d)

If either condition fails, the heir is a friend or a relative outside the named list, or the firearm changes hands informally before a personal representative is appointed, the dealer-and-background-check requirement applies in full, the same as an ordinary private sale.

What the code says about inheritance itself

Named expressly, and narrowly. Oregon’s exemption speaks in terms of “death of the firearm owner” and “personal representative,” not the word inherit itself, which is why a plain keyword search for “inherit” across the whole chapter finds nothing.

The transfer of a firearm that occurs because of the death of the firearm owner, provided that: (A) The transfer is conducted or facilitated by a personal representative, as defined in ORS 111.005, or a trustee of a trust created in a will; and (B) The transferee is related to the deceased firearm owner

Source: ORS 166.435(4)(d)

The carve-out applies only where the heir is one of the named relatives and the transfer runs through a formally appointed personal representative or testamentary trustee. A bequest to a non-relative or a distant relative not on the list gets no exemption at all.

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 Oregon 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.