Questions About Private Gun Sales

Private gun sales, good or bad? Is it the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do? Should you be worried about buying a gun privately from someone you don't know or selling a gun privately to someone you don't know? These are all reasonable questions for a responsible gun owner. The fact is, that private gun sales, gun show loopholes, these ideas that off record gun sales are somehow automatically bad has certainly been perpetuated by those with the anti-gun agenda, and that information sorta gets passed around in the mass media and the middle ground of America that doesn't really understand how firearms ownership works might think, "Wow, if you're selling a gun privately and you're not using a licensed dealer, you're doing something wrong." The fact is, that in some places, there are actual laws against private transfers of firearms, but if you live in the vast majority of the United States, there are circumstances under which it is perfectly legal for you to transfer a firearm to someone else either as a gift or selling it to them.

You don't have to do a background check, they don't have to be registered with a local dealer, you don't have to let anyone know except that person. If you feel like they're giving you a reasonable price for the gun or you feel like they're asking a reasonable price for the gun, there ends the transaction. And it's very much like buying or selling any other piece of personally owned property, but there are certainly comes a moral, ethical, integrity issue with the obligation you have to where that firearm ends up or where that firearm came from. It's gonna be in your personal interest to have some idea of what's gonna happen in both cases. Now, again, this isn't always a legal issue.

If there is a legal issue, then it should be pretty black and white, either they're a legal private sales in your area or they aren't. If they aren't, it's not a good idea to do any private sale. You don't wanna get involved in that obviously, it's a violation of law. No responsible firearms owner would enter into that situation. So you go to the dealer, your buddy wants to sell you a gun, cool.

You go to a gun shop, you do the appropriate transfer, you do the appropriate paperwork, you pay the appropriate fee to have that dealer take care of that transaction. But in the case that you are legally allowed to buy a gun from someone or sell a gun to someone that you don't know, what are the reasonable precautions that someone might take? Well, on the few occasions that I've done this in recent history, I really haven't done it very much except maybe to give a gift to someone or to receive a gift from someone. When it comes to the actual transfer where you've made an arrangement on the internet, or you've met someone at a gun range, or at a gun shop that you don't know very well and they have a firearm you wanna buy, or they wanna buy a firearm from you and you're just gonna go ahead and do that cash transaction, a couple of things I'd suggest you do. First, you wanna make sure that you get some kind of idea who this person is.

Get a photocopy of their ID, maybe you pull out your smartphone, your cell phone, you take a picture of their driver's license. If the person isn't comfortable with you taking the picture of their driver's license, with letting you have a photocopy of their driver's license, well, that's a red flag. You're selling them a potentially lethal tool, you're selling them something that your name may be attached to on some federal paperwork. There's a responsibility here, there's a trust factor here, and if they don't trust you with the information of who they are and where that gun went, there's a problem. If they don't trust you with the information about where the gun you're purchasing came from, I'd consider that a red flag.

So there's one thing you might wanna do, you could also take that a step further if you're selling the gun to the person. Maybe you're gonna ask for a concealed carry permit. If you're in a state which requires ID for firearms ownership, then private sales are also probably pretty, tightly controlled, but if you end up in a situation where the state requires an ID or a permit to own a firearm, or maybe a city does, and they don't require any special restrictions on private sales, then you probably wanna make sure that you understand it's in your best interest to make sure that that person had the legal permit to own the gun or to own the gun you're about to sell them before you go ahead with that transaction. The other thing you're gonna wanna get, obviously, is a bill of sale, that bill of sale is going to be signed by both parties, who's gonna have the information about the price. That way you can say, "Okay, I didn't just give this gun to this person, I didn't just take this gun from this person, but there was an actual business transaction here." That'll probably be something you wanna be able to say.

Also, if for any reason that transaction, that sale, that transfer of one firearm from one person to another gets asked about by any authorities in the future, so a couple of simple precautions, if you're going to do a private sale, first, make sure it's legal. Second, make sure you know who you're getting the gun from, who you're giving it to and you have some way to track that information or share that information with the authorities. It becomes important in the future, that also will establish that trust between you and that person, that not only is the firearm exchange happening but there's an information exchange happening as well. And in that last part, is making sure that you understand that they can legally own the firearm as far as you know or that they did legally own the firearm they're transferring to you as far as you know in the jurisdiction that you're actually doing that transfer in. You wanna be careful about things like crossing state lines, and you wanna be careful about anytime somebody says, "Hey, let's make sure that no dealers know about this, or I don't want so-and-so or anyone else to know this transaction is happening," probably another red flag.

Private sales, when they're legal, nothing wrong with them whatsoever. I've engaged with them, I'm sure I'll engage with them again but when I do, I'm gonna take reasonable precautions to have the information at hand that I need to know that I'm not making a mistake or that I'm at least acting with appropriate responsible precautions in place when I do a private transfer.