Do I Have To Register Guns I Inherited From My Father

The outcome of gun ownership has returned to the forefront afterward mass shootings at a Las Vegas country music festival in October and in a Texas church last month. Most of the concerns revolve effectually restrictions on gun purchases and who can ain what blazon of weapon.

Things could get a little murky from a legal standpoint if you happen to inherit a gun from a loved one. In This calendar week's Friday Forum, we look at the case of a Rockford woman who institute herself in such a state of affairs.

Holli Connell takes out her gun at her Rockford home and notes the pattern particular nigh the grip, which has a piddling etching of a squirrel. She says that's why she and her brothers affectionately referred to the .22-caliber rifle as "the squirrel gun." She says she inherited the gun from her begetter after he died unexpectedly from surgery complications a few years ago.

"You know, it's funny," she said. "I don't really really think of myself as owning a gun. It's really just a keepsake from my father, is what it means to me."

Connell but shot the gun once just for fun at a family subcontract property shortly after her father died. Afterward that, she says, she put a lock on it and stored information technology.

"Information technology was, I retrieve, but more sentimental for me to exercise it, and then I put it away," she said.

Things could have been complicated if Connell had not already had a Firearm Owners Identification – or FOID – card, when she inherited the squirrel gun, especially since her father's decease was unexpected.

"I day, my married man said, 'We should become a FOID card,'" Connell recalled, "and I'm like, 'Cool,' and we did. Information technology's really the only reason why I ain a FOID card; I gauge it's my right, so I did it. So I didn't think anything of information technology when I received the gun, considering I own a FOID card."

There are a scattering of people in Illinois who would not be eligible for a FOID card right off the bat, even if they inherited a firearm. That'due south according to Mark Jones, managing director of the National Police Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence. He likewise is a one-time Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms federal agent.

"Convicted felons, people who have renounced their citizenship, illegal aliens, drug addicts or abusers, people who take been adjudicated with a mental affliction and involuntarily committed [to a mental health establishment], domestic abusers," he recited the list. "There's, I think, 9 categories."

Other categories include beingness dishonorably discharged from the Armed Forces or being nether a restraining order, according to the Illinois State Police Firearms Services Bureau website.

Connell says she didn't do much beyond getting the FOID bill of fare when she inherited the gun, since none of those forbidding categories applied to her. She said her mother died earlier her father, and she and her brothers technically inherited their male parent's estate.

"In Illinois, the only thing I know about Illinois law is that you don't actually transfer – yous don't accept to accept a permit for a gun, considering you have to have the FOID card," she said. "I didn't actually consider doing anything else too putting a gun lock on it and putting it away."

The fact that Connell'due south father didn't accept a will at the fourth dimension he died still made things a fiddling more complicated regarding technical ownership of the gun.

"If my dad actually had a will, there would be an executor. There would exist somebody that would be overseeing the holding," Connell said. "And because of that, that person would then ain my dad's belongings … but then they would have to transfer the gun to me.

"Merely my dad didn't have a will, and his stuff just came to me, so my dad couldn't transfer the gun to me – hence, why I really haven't investigated much further on what to do. I just idea keeping information technology safe and keeping it put abroad was my best option."

That … along with the proper state authorization.

"No matter what type of firearm, equally long as it is a performance firearm and has a proper serial number then forth, we're only concerned with whether or non the individual has a valid FOID card," said Matt Boerwinkle, a master sergeant and Public Information Officer with the Illinois State Police.

He says anyone with a valid FOID card can possess firearms from a relative'southward estate, only he yet advises gun owners to think alee when it comes to who actually would inherit the firearm.

"I thing we ever recommend to persons that own firearms is to have a will and to outline in that will or delegate who is supposed to take responsible possession of the firearm, should they laissez passer," Boerwinkle explained, "and annotate that with make, model and serial number of the weapon to be transferred to another individual."

Just if a gun is nonfunctioning and will exist used more as a display, Boerwinkle says a FOID carte du jour might not exist necessary for someone who inherits that piece.

"So if a firearm is rendered inoperable – you know, the bolt permanently removed or trigger mechanism or whatever the case is where it becomes permanently inoperable – at that point, it's just basically a show slice," he said, "so it really ceases to exist [as] a functioning firearm at that point."

Boerwinkle says one living person who wants to give a gun to another living person can do then past submitting a transfer notification on the Illinois State Police Firearms Services Agency website. He says both parties would still need FOID cards.

Onetime ATF Amanuensis Mark Jones says any firearm inheritances that cantankerous state lines – say, if a relative from Illinois dies and a family unit fellow member from Wisconsin inherits the gun – are also subject field to the other country'due south laws.

Correction (12/thirteen/17): Connell's gun is a .22 quotient rifle, not a shotgun.

Source: https://www.northernpublicradio.org/news/2017-12-08/inheriting-firearms-still-must-follow-certain-ownership-rules

Posted by: loganloyarround.blogspot.com

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