Do I Have to Register a Gun in My Name? Gun Registry Explained.

Is there a gun registry? Do all your firearms have to be “registered in your name?” How do you register your guns? Does the ATF have a firearm registry? If you inherited a gun, purchased through a private sale, or were gifted a gun, what do you need to do in states that don’t have a gun registry? Firearm registration is a hot topic and a lot of folks ask, how do you make it legal? The Armed Attorneys break down the gun law that applies to firearm registration and the gun registry.

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Richard D. Hayes, II: @TXGunLaw
Emily Taylor: @2A_Attorney

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PARTIAL AUTO-TRANSCRIPT
today we're talking about gun registries what you need to know on the federal level on the state level particularly here in texas ... what on the federal level do we need to talk about it's a common misconception because a lot of people think hey i bought a gun it's registered in my name or let's say they engage in a private sale and there i get this question all the time from my clients how do i register my gun and on the federal level there isn't a gun registry in fact federal law prohibits the centralization of gun records so that's a great protection but what a lot of people confuse as a federal gun registry is actually the the atf 4473 the firearms transaction record and when you go and you buy a gun from an ffl a gun store they keep those records as part of their inventory they have to keep them for a couple of decades and if they close down they have to turn them over to to the atf and the fbi but those aren't centralized in any type of database and so knowing we don't have a federal database we have to then look at the states and some states do have gun registries and so if you live in a state that has a gun registry you know this really doesn't apply to you as much but most states do not have a gun registry and let's start by by way of example let's talk about texas emily yeah and i'll just go back for a second and say just because those 4473s do not a registry make does not mean they're untraceable i think we all know i mean we see all the time firearms are you know perhaps sold in a way that you shouldn't have sold them we showed up next to a dead politician in mexico yeah we you know our clients encounter these sorts of issues and if your name is on that 4473 law enforcement will trace it back to you but it's not a registry and then on the state level you know for most states not california but you know here in texas and most across the country do not maintain their own firearm registry so when someone calls us and they say hey i just inherited a gun from my uncle's estate or i just was gifted a gun or i just bought a gun in a private sale how do i register to my name the answer is not only is there nothing you should do there's nothing you can do there is no centralized database and no law enforcement no one is going to bat an eye if the name that's associated with that 4473 for that serial number firearm is not yours yeah and going back to it's the firearms trace as opposed to the centralized database and so that really gets us to our kind of pro tip of the day and the database that i do think people need to be aware of uh which is the ncic lost and stolen property database so our national crime information center it queries all these different databases for all types of different information criminal you know criminal records whether you're here in the country legally they also have another database that they query for lost and stolen property so let's say your car gets broken into and your your gun was in there and you report it to the police and provide them the serial number what the police will then do is enter that serial number into that database... because if a gun has been lost or stolen it finally makes its way back to its rightful owner but that's the database that people i think sometimes confused with kind of a national gun registry ... i mean it really is something that's beneficial to gun owners if that firearm is lost or stolen ...

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