Used gun that might be stolen

[DeepSouth]

The question came to me because of an incident that happened in my community last week. A guy was taken to jail because he owned a stolen gun, he is not belied to be the thief at this point. Their were other "causes for concern" in this case, but the only charge was possession of stolen property. He was also immediately fired from his job as a result of the whole incident/arrest. The question that came to my mind is what if he bought it not knowing it was stolen. Will having a written Bill of Sale be enough to get out of the legal mess?

What do you do if you if you lose a bill of sale? If you call the local sheriffs dept and have them "run the numbers" before you buy one (assuming you can do that) and it does come back stolen would you be obligated to turn in the seller, after all he might be a friend, coworker, ect that unknowingly bought a hot gun.

I haven't bought a gun from an individual in years, and thinking of this has me questioning ever doing so again.

What could one do to CYA when buying used guns?

 

[TexasRifleman]

Well, not sure of the state but in general the charge of "possession of stolen property" only sticks if there is some proof that the person KNEW it was stolen and bought or kept it anyway. You don't have to be the thief to be guilty, if you knew it was stolen.

So it's hard to play guessing games but unless there is something else going on the prosecutor likely has a reason to think the guy had knowledge that the gun was stolen.

As you say, there were other "causes for concern" and somewhere in there is probably the thought that there was knowledge of the guns status as stolen.

If you in good faith were to buy a gun from someone, gun show for example, and that later turned out to be a stolen gun, there wouldn't be a crime you'd just lose the gun and the money you spent for it.

As for the question, how do you CYA, there really isn't a foolproof method for most people. Paper trail is probably a good method, bill of sale and some info on the seller. Care in where you buy guns might be good too. Online ad? OK. Gun show? OK.

Met some guy behind a bar who had guns in the trunk of his car? Eh, not so much

It's a good question.


Funny Story from a cop friend of mine:

There's a small town north of Ft Worth called Bridgeport. Cop arrests a guy with a trunk full of power tools. All marked with the stencil "CoB".

Cop asks, whose tools are these? Guy says, Oh those belong to my friend Cob.

City of Bridgeport reported a box of tools stolen that morning. C o B

That's possession of stolen property lol