Ever recover a firearm stolen from you?

I had the 2nd rifle my dad ever bought me, a Winchester Model 70 Classic stainless in .338 Win Mag with a Zeiss Conquest scope. He bought it for a self-guided elk hunting trip we went on in Montana my senior year of high school. I killed my first deer with it on that trip and many deer afterwards.


Got stolen in Minnesota and never recovered.

I paid $50 for a 12ga shotgun way back around 1990 and it was a beater but it shot fine. It was my first shotgun and I worked on the stock and got it looking pretty good and then it was stolen right out of our little house. A couple of years later I was notified that it had been recovered in San Diego - I lived in Lodi, CA at the time so no I wasn't going to go to SD for that gun. I did tell the PD down there my decision.

Some interesting tales of people who got theirs back. Sadly none of mine ever have been.
One funny story of the "good guys winning" in this. LONG ago City I lived in had a Couple pawn shops I would go through now and then. Had bought a couple guns from both of them over years. Had no idea the same guy owned both. He worked one, paid someone to work the other. Story in local news, he gets call middle of the night. Smash and grab has been done at shop he paid others to work. He goes down middle of the night to see what's missing, hand full of hand guns. So by the time he is done its time to go open the one he runs. Standing outside is some guy with back pack, asks "you buy guns?" He opens up, guy pulls a gun out of pack. It's one of the guns stolen hours before. He acts real interested, asks guy, "you have any more?". He said sure and when he bends down to get another owner pulls a gun on him, orders him to floor till Cops get there. The guy figured he could sell the stolen before anyone knew they were stolen and in those pre net days it would have worked fine if not for his bad luck. Next time I was in his place we had a good laugh about it and how I had bought guns from him at both shops with no idea he owned them both

I got cleaned out during a break-in decades ago. Dozens of handguns, mostly classic S&W revolvers and various competition guns, all stored in an oak cabinet with a glass front. Hard lesson, for a very young man, about not keeping guns in a safe. Anyway, the deputy taking the report told me not to hold my breath; that those guns would have been in Mexico within a couple of hours and even if I did get any of them back they would be in pretty poor condition. I still keep an eye out for a few of them that I really miss, but no, I don't plan on ever seeing any of them again.

Jack B touched on something that many people do not know, so it is worth expanding on. If you accept an insurance payment for a stolen gun, the insurance company might claim ownership. They might have already filed paperwork with the police to that effect. If you did accept an insurance payment, and you learn that your gun is recovered, you might contact the insurance company to see if you can buy it back from them before they auction it.

Back in 1988 I turned 21 and bought a Taurus 66 .357 and an Iver Johnson TP-22 .22 LR. The IJ was taken, along with a jar of coins worth about $200.00, from my house that was on a dairy goat farm South of Eureka, CA. I filed a report with the Humboldt County SO, and went on with life.

In 1993 I was working at a Southern California PD and one night I took a call from Humboldt SO. The lady who called told me that in 1991 they had recovered my gun off of a native guy who was acting nuts and jumped the fence into a PG&E service yard to break the windows on the service trucks. The responding deputy confiscated the gun from the idiot and booked it into the property room, but never ran the serial number or it would have returned to match up with my stolen gun report.

Two years later the property clerk was going to destroy a bunch of guns and saw it hadn't been run. She ran the number and it came back to me as a stolen gun, so she tracked me down and called my employer. After her call, she mailed me the gun and the report. The only real changes in the condition was the anodizing on the alloy grip frame turned kind of a golden color from it's original black and the magazine still has a really faint case number written on it in marker.

(It's the gun at the top, the other is a 1951 Beretta/Helwan 9mm.)




Stay safe.

1MoreFord said:

Great laws we have in Arkansas concerning pawn shops

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Ditto for Oklahoma. Years ago OK political hacks passed the Pawnshop Act after a pawnshop millionaire went to prison for knowingly buying stolen property. Law is designed to protect pawnshop owners from being charged with knowingly buying stolen property . A written declaration of ownership by the seller is required.

The only legal method to retrieve your stolen property from a pawnshop is buy it back.

alsaqr said:

Ditto for Oklahoma. Years ago OK political hacks passed the Pawnshop Act after a pawnshop millionaire went to prison for knowingly buying stolen property. Law is designed to protect pawnshop owners from being charged with knowingly buying stolen property . A written declaration of ownership by the seller is required.

The only legal method to retrieve your stolen property from a pawnshop is buy it back.

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Yes, essentially the same thing here.

So.....if you file a police report for stolen property, including pics, specific details, and serial numbers, the police won't seize it and the pawn shop is allowed to keep it???
Do they even go after the person(s) who sold the items to the pawn shop???

AFAIK in Arkansas the pawnshop is allowed to keep any stolen property, not just guns, provided they reported the purchase properly.

LE does, supposedly, attempt to find the thief.

I have heard that in states where pawnbrokers are allowed to keep stolen property, that they are required to sell it back to you at their cost, if you can prove it was stolen from you. Anyone know if that is true?

im surprised that no one ever challenged those laws allowing pawn shops to keep peoples stolen property

heyjoe said:

im surprised that no one ever challenged those laws allowing pawn shops to keep peoples stolen property

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How is the pawn broker compensated for the loss of goods bought in good faith?

Here in Florida - that pawn broker is SOL... period. and talking about pawn brokers and "good faith" got me thinking about exactly who's kidding who? Yes, there are pawn brokers who are straight up - but in my actual experience there's entirely too many of the other kind... Any time you see a community with lots of "we buy gold" signs you can bet that the burglary rate is a bit on the high side.


Firearms are one of the few items that (at least after 1968) always come with serial numbers -that can actually be tracked. Jewelry on the other hand - has no memory and is all too easily converted back into the materials it was made from and in that state is absolutely un- traceable... The exception to that are high value pieces that have far greater value than their component materials and so are likely to remain intact as they pass from hand to hand...

P5 Guy said:

How is the pawn broker compensated for the loss of goods bought in good faith?

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why should a pawn broker be compensated for someones stolen property?

P5 Guy said:

How is the pawn broker compensated for the loss of goods bought in good faith?

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Sue the seller. Of course that's a dead end, but as the poster above says, why should he be compensated?

why should a pawn broker be compensated for someone's stolen property?

That is the quandary isn't it? To be safe the broker should not buy anything?

P5 Guy said:

why should a pawn broker be compensated for someone's stolen property?

That is the quandary isn't it? To be safe the broker should not buy anything?

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So, who do you think should compensate him? The original owner? Why should he be out twice for his gun?

I personally haven't had a gun stolen (knock on wood!), but a Browning watercooled machine gun that I sold was stolen from the buyer. Someone stole it out of the trunk of his car. Say what you will about the ATF, but they take the theft of machine guns very seriously. It wasn't long before the ATF, working their contacts in the community, was able to recover the gun for the owner. (They weren't able to recover the spare barrel that was stolen at the same time.)

Outlaw75 said:

So, who do you think should compensate him? The original owner? Why should he be out twice for his gun?

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So, pawn brokers and their stores should all be shuttered?

P5 Guy said:

That is the quandary isn't it? To be safe the broker should not buy anything?

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P5 Guy said:

So, pawn brokers and their stores should all be shuttered?

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You're being childish, and you know it.

Pawn shops take a calculated business risk pawning or buying goods. When the risk comes true, they should hand over the stolen item, cooperate with the investigation, and if possible pursue the person who fraudulently sold the item. That the pawn shop bought the item in good faith in no way reduces the rightful owners claim.

Every business entails risks, and pawning isn't exempt.

P5 Guy said:

So, pawn brokers and their stores should all be shuttered?

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Why should it be different from a private citizen buying stolen goods (unknowingly)? From my understanding, if I was to buy stolen firearm, I would lose it, and I would be out what I paid for.
Not sure what the answer is, but I'm sure that pawn shops could probably purchase insurance to cover themselves for situations like this.

edwardware said:

You're being childish, and you know it.

Pawn shops take a calculated business risk pawning or buying goods. When the risk comes true, they should hand over the stolen item, cooperate with the investigation, and if possible pursue the person who fraudulently sold the item. That the pawn shop bought the item in good faith in no way reduces the rightful owners claim.

Every business entails risks, and pawning isn't exempt.

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Pursuing the the person is a dead end, and you know that. Why should anyone have to surrender property they bought in good faith? Now if the broker is dealing with known felons that broker needs to be shutdown, period.

Sypher.... said:

Why should it be different from a private citizen buying stolen goods (unknowingly)? From my understanding, if I was to buy stolen firearm, I would lose it, and I would be out what I paid for.

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Pawn brokers are buying with an eye towards profiting from the sale. A private person is not.
That is the difference.