Bus full o' guns (courtesy adequateman.deadspin.com)
“Alright, so we have a school bus loaded with compact carriers of lethal force. And your mother-in-law is the legal owner. What is the best way to check to see that these are all legal firearms? The most cautious approach would be to have a lawyer run serial numbers with a local reputable gun dealer. States then vary on what you need to do with an unregistered firearm (or, like, dozens of them), and also on whether all gun transfers need to go through a licensed dealer. Older guns deemed to be antiques under law are exempt from registration. So if you’ve got a bus full of muskets, congratulations—I hear those are hot right now with the small but enthusiastic hipster contingent of the NRA.” – Ask a Lawyer in What Do I Do With My Dead Father-In-Law’s School Bus Full Of Guns? [via adequateman.deadspin.com]

[h/t JA]

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50 COMMENTS

    • This is the big disconnect: we POTG assume that in a free society the vast majority of the population is law abiding, so 99% of anyone carrying should be lawful. In such a society there would be no need to check anyone’s papers, as the criminal element is so rare and outgunned that violent crime would have to take place hidden and out of the open.

      Progressives believe EVERYONE is a criminal waiting to happen. Only the very chosen few, lets just call them the 1%, should have a gun. In such a society, as the 99% are considered potential criminal scum, there is no reason for them to have rights like privacy or the ability to defend themselves.

      I don’t want to live in the Progressive’s disgusting dystopian classist world.

  2. Take the guns, put them in a safe place of your choosing, and STFU. It’s nobody else’s business.

    • This is a pearl-clutcher who refers to firearms as “compact carriers of lethal force” – he/she won’t do any such thing. They’re an object of fear for this person.

      • When I read “compact carriers of lethal force” and especially with reference to a school bus, at first I thought it was a School Carry debate…that someone was arguing against the notion of school children themselves carrying (as if anyone were actually suggesting that).

        😉

  3. Your dead family member had gun loving friends, right?
    Ask them for references to a few reputable dealers, invite the dealers over individually to bid on the whole collection.

    Or, more likely the way to maximize return, interview 2-3 auctioneers with FFLs to tell you how they’d publicize and conduct an estate auction for you, assuming that this busload is similar in quantity to my local auction house’s fall firearms consignment sale.

  5. A busload of “Unregistered Firearms” ????

    What is a “Registered Firearm”??? Drive that bus and cargo out of whatever slave state even allows the word register and gun in the same paragraph.

    • I think this constant use of the word ‘registered’ (movies, online, etc) by anti-gunners is intentional. They are trying to normalize the notion, incorrect as it is now, that firearms are SUPPOSED to be registered. All of ’em.

      I have talked with people that have asked me if my guns are registered. There have been several that were shocked to learn that there is no registration (here or any state that borders here). They were not anti-gun, but that’s the belief they were “raised with.”

      So, not anti-gun but educated on gun rights by the anti-gun crowd.

      (Caveat: this assuming that one does not include 4473 and CWP’s as implied registration; I’m talking about formal registration…it’s “own paperwork” so to speak).

      • This is exactly the kind of information I’d expect to get from a column called ‘Ask a Lawyer’. This idiot seems more interested in practicing his snark than disseminating pertinent information. His response should have been to call an FFL and he’ll know if there’s any NFA or class 3 weapons of if you live in NY or CT whether you have ‘assault weapons’ that are supposed to be registered. And of course anything else you’re free to sell to whoever you want provided you don’t knowingly provide a weapon to a prohibited person.

        • Checking for stolen weapons might be a good plan, as well, but this doofus can only come up with “registered”. As mentioned before, if that is a concern in the state where the guns are, drive the bus to a different state! Duh! Problem solved! But if any have been reported stolen, they will still be stolen.

      • In small LGS recently as a couple young guys were shopping for a new piece. One asked the owners wife, who was running the counter, what they had to do in order to lawfully sell a gun. She didn’t know much but suggested “to be safe” best to sell thru a LGS.

        I pointed out to them that there is NO such legal requirement.

  6. Balderdash. Hipsters are more inclined to carry either single-action revolvers (so old it’s cool), Luger PO8s (the PBR of semi-automatic pistols), or the “I owned a plastic fantastic before it was cool” HK VP-70z.

  8. So much fail.

    Don’t you have to go to school to be a lawyer? Did this idiot not learn anything while in school?

    • ‘Don’t you have to go to school to be a lawyer?’

      Considering that our glorious dear leader (BO) graduated from the most prestigious law school in the country I would assume that law school is not a place you go to get smart.

    • I have helped a friend or two study for law school. The impression I got was that half of what you learn in law school is to accept the perversions of logic that have been canonized. And this was before I was really big on constitutionality and individual rights.

      • You are actually on to something there. the law schools themselves will tell you they are not there to teach you the law so much as to teach you to “think like a lawyer” (ie to warp your mind so that you can understand and use concepts and arguments that make absolutely no sense to anybody but lawyers).

  9. And the lesson of the day is: Estate planning!

    If you own any valuables or valuable property, it’s important to have a plan for its disposition after you shrug off the ol’ mortal coil. Having a will is a good start, but an estate plan will also have answers for what and how the heck the son- or daughter-in-law is supposed to do what you want done.

    This is especially important if you have firearms that are valuable either because they’re collectible or simply cost a lot. And especiallyer importanter if you have relatives like the person in the article, who from the context wouldn’t know a clipazine from a thing that goes up, named as executor of your estate. Why? Because leaving clear and detailed instructions helps reduce the probability that your lovingly assembled and maintained collection is just given over to the local PD for “disposal.”

    Which brings up the issue of choosing your estate’s executor: he, she or they (e.g. a law firm) needs to be both competent to do what you want done, and trustworthy enough to do it in as close an accord with your wishes as possible and practical.

    • Clearly stipulate that all money grubbing big mouth daughters in law have not interest/valid opinion in anything.

  10. “What is the best way to check to see that these are all legal firearms?”

    As has been pointed out here numerous times, there are no “legal firearms” or “illegal firearms.” There are firearms that illegal to own/possess in certain areas or without certain special paid permission slips.

    But the firearms themselves are not “legal” or “illegal.”

    “The most cautious approach would be to have a lawyer run serial numbers with a local reputable gun dealer.”

    Why would you have, or even WANT, a LAWYER to run the serial numbers with a DEALER?

    This does not make any sense whatsoever … on several levels.

    • Yep. This lawyer is a gold-plated moron, which is why he’s scribbling this twaddle for a blog.

      First, running the guns through a lawyer does nothing to insulate the person to whom he’s giving the advice.

      Second, what are we dealers (01 FFL’s) supposed to do? If someone comes to be with a gun and asks “Is this an ‘illegal’ gun?” I’m going to laugh and point them out my door. There’s no such thing, I have no database or online query tool I can use. If you want to know whether they’re stolen, you’d have to talk to the local cops to gain access to those databases, but if the local cops here are any indication, they don’t want to run gun S/N’s any more (not even for us FFL’s) because, well, I suppose they got tired of having to clean the donut glazing off their fingers so often.

      I hope no one is actually paying this lawyer for his/her time.

      • I had a brand new 4″ Python stolen in 1969, followed the rules, reported it with all info including the serial # to a bored and disinterested cop, and here 45 years later have not heard squat. I won’t waste my time again. Maybe that’s why cops don’t care about running numbers.

        • The only real value in reporting the gun stolen is if it ever turns up in a crime scene, you’ve got the police report to back you up that you’re not an “illegal arms dealer supplying illicit guns to criminal gangs”. Especially if you live in a gun-unfriendly area,

  11. If I inherited a bus full of firearms, I would start with a small celebration dinner and then proceed to catalog all of the firearms. After the catalog was complete, I would ascertain the utility and value of each item. Finally, I would sell off anything that I did not want to keep — whether for their utility or as an investment.

    • Or the definition of “mixed feelings”: seeing a busload of lawyers going over a cliff, and knowing that there were a couple of empty seats…

  16. “The most cautious approach would be to have a lawyer run serial numbers with a local reputable gun dealer.”

    So when you take a problem to Ask A Lawyer, their first recommendation is to hire a lawyer. Why am I not surprised?

  17. I have to assume that this blight on the profession is from a state like CT where pretty much all sales and transfers are now logged with the state, such that all recently transferred firearms are registered.

  19. Given the dearth of actual information in the original article, and the general ignorance and fear of guns that seems to be implied in the questioner’s tone, it could be another “1200 guns and 8 tons of ammo” situation, or it could be three rifles, two old revolvers, and a spam can of old Russian ammo. People who are scared of guns tend to think any plurality of them is a huge amount. So “bus full of guns” could mean anything, depending on how freaked out by guns the person in question is.

  20. I happen to know that there are many school buses loaded with deadly weapons called “children.” And most of them are registered — for school.

  22. HEY, I’m a licensed bus driver, I’ll make sure that bus is properly navigated to a safe secure garage and will care for its precious load………………………..

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