Know The Law! Purchasing a Firearm for Family Friends: The Do's and Don't
By Gregory Kielma
If I bought a gun for someone and registered it at the store and its stolen, can something come back on me?
If I bought a gun for someone and registered it at the store and its stolen, can something come back on me?
From an Avid Reader of my blog
Let’s Take a LOOK!
You “bought a gun for someone”? As in “You bought a gun with your own money and gave it to someone as a gift?” or “Someone gave you money to buy a gun for them”.
I have a feeling it’s the second.
So yes, you can be in a lot of trouble, because you have committed a federal felony known as a straw purchase.
You can spend up to ten years in federal prison for it.
Most states don’t have registration, but yes, if you registered it as belonging to you, and then gave it to someone, and it turns up as used in a crime, it will get traced to you, and likely be evidence that you either did a straw purchase or transferred a firearm illegally.
Enjoy your time in Club Fed!
ETA: A number of comments question the nature and legality of gifting firearms. So I’m going to write this once more, and delete any comments that continue misinformation:
• It’s perfectly legal, at the federal level, to give someone a bona fide gift of a firearm.
• There are no particular restrictions on this about who you may gift a firearm too (they may be family members, friends, etc.
• There are no particular restrictions that one must own a firearm for some period of time before gifting it to another. You may go to a gun store on Christmas Eve, tell them that you are buying a gun to give to your wife/mistress/girlfriends/best friend/best friends wife/child for Christmas and they will happily help you out.
• You can’t legally give a firearm to someone who you know or should know is a prohibited possessor.
• (Broadly) you can’t legally give a firearm to someone where that firearm would cross state lines as part of the gifting process.
• It is NOT legal to make a “gift” that isn’t actually a gift. Again, the key word here is a “bona fide gift”. A firearm given in exchange for something isn’t really a bona fide gift anymore.
• The 4473 form asks for the “actual buyer/transferee”, which means “The person who is paying the money”, not the recipient of a gift.
• Whatever you heard from your uncle’s friends ex-lovers wife’s cousin isn’t relevant.
References: Gifting Guns - Is It Legal - FFL License
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/qa/whom-may-unlicensed-person-transfer-firearms-under-gca
https://www.ffl123.com/gifting-guns-is-it-legal/
https://www.guns.com/news/2013/12/12/gifting-guns-need-know
https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/4473-part-1-firearms-transaction-record-over-counter-atf-form-53009/download