Shipping firearms to myself?

[Mtneer]

My Dad recently passed and left me his gun collection, roughly a half dozen handguns and a half dozen long guns. None are NFA and most are registered in the District of Columbia. Since they are legally mine and I'm not a prohibited person, can I ship them to myself or do they have to go to an FFL? Anything else I should know? I'll be selling some of them but sure as hell don't want to deal with that in DC.

[JohnnyEgo]

Too complicated for me to give you any advice, given the circumstances. I will say in my traveling days, I used to ship my rifles to myself at the hotels I would be living out of for months on end. It was easy. UPS ground.

Personally, to avoid most of these complexities, I'd have the executor ship them to your local FFL.

[FoxtArt]

That's mixing estate and firearm law. An estate requires a probate, an executor, etc to be proper, (executor then transfers property to decedents, sort of) and then you are out of state which is a problem. Colorado's UBC does not provide an exemption for transfers between an executor to a decedent, only from the deceased to the executor IIRC. DC of course requires registration and I wouldn't be surprised if there are few to no transfer exemptions, and certainly even less when you are dealing with interstate. DC knowledge would be applicable and I doubt many know it. Even then, person to person transfers in states where it is legal can only occur between residents of that state.

In this circumstance, I'd suggest shipping the handguns in bulk through a FFL there to your Colorado dealer (so they go first class USPS mail, cheaper), and personally ship the long guns to a FFL in Colorado using either UPS or Fedex, then pick them up under a 4473 once you are back in the state. It may be a slightly different story if you personally owned them, but you are in the process of inheriting them, and from a jurisdiction where they are registered, no less.

This is of course, based on current regulatory understanding and it is not legal advice.

ETA/TLDR:
1) Go to a FFL around DC and ship all the handguns out to your dealer in Colorado. It will save you money as opposed to shipping it yourself (Fedex and UPS make individuals do overnight air usually)

2) Ship the long guns out yourself, to your FFL in Colorado, by going to either the UPS hub or Fedex hub with them prepackaged in carboard boxes, no identifying marks on the outside that they are guns. They should ship via ground.

[O2HeN2]

An estate requires a probate, an executor, etc to be proper, (executor then transfers property to decedents, sort of)

Why, IMHO, everyone should have a trust (I'm not talking about an NFA trust here, I'm talking a general trust) instead of depending on a will/probate to take care of everything.

IANAL, but a trust is an entity that continues to exist beyond your death, facilitating the transfer of the items you owned smoothly, expeditiously and inexpensively to your heirs.

Another way to phrase it: Pay now (for a trust) or pay later (for probate). I suggest you pay now when you have control over the process.

O2

Ps. You can have very fine control over a trust. My parents had a trust. It specified that money could ONLY be distributed to the kids if it went directly into a trust, and the trust gave us all a reasonable amount up front, enough to form a trust. We did, got our distributions and their trust went away.

[eddiememphis]

Sounds like the easiest way is to take a road trip back east. Make sure everything is done correctly.

[Wulf202]

Iirc there are no dc ffl and the cops took it over and have made a mess of it. As of a couple of years ago at least

[Great-Kazoo]

Iirc there are no dc ffl and the cops took it over and have made a mess of it. As of a couple of years ago at least

Correct. As mentioned, before. Take a drive back east, bring back what ever you know is your's.

[Mtneer]

Yeah, I kinda figured a road trip might be in my future. FWIW, there is now an independent FFL in DC, a branch of a gun shop in Virginia.

[SideShow Bob]

Correct. As mentioned, before. Take a drive back east, bring back what ever you know is your's.

Rent a vehicle there with local tags,make sure it topped off with fuel, be low profile and obey any and all traffic laws, attract as little attention as possible, put everything in cases or covered & camouflage don?t stop until you are in 2A friendly territory.

[bradbn4]

if there is ammo - make sure it is stored in a different locked container.
Yep, I would try to make sure that I did not even have to stop for gas, never leave the car...
If I was hauling lets say a glock pistol, I would pull the slide off - and even put that in a different locked container.

not sure what the law is on trigger locks, etc -