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Be Careful Buying New Gun From An Individual

9K views 27 replies 19 participants last post by  ncsHR2000 
#1 ·
My nephew who is 21 yoa brought a Smith And Wesson Model 686 by the house. He wanted it tuned like the one I have. He said he paid $ 150.00 for it and it was still in the box. I told him we need to run the serial numbers to find out if it was stolen. Well being 21, he like my son think they are the smartest people in the world. He took it to a gunsmith and later received a call from them that the firearm was indeed stolen. Now he is being questioned by the investigators and told me he's forfeited the money and wished he had listened to me.
 
#4 ·
He's lucky he only lost his money on the deal. Buying something at a price that far under market value is sometimes enough for a prosecutor to establish criminal intent and charge a person with receiving and concealing stolen property.

Good lesson, and he got off very easy!
 
#6 ·
I've had that happen twice, except it was from ffls. First time it was from a former police armorer. A Colt Police Positive .22lr with the numbers ground off. Beautiful gun, but... Got my money back and the gun was destroyed.

Second was an H&R .22lr that was stolen. GS ran it as part of the transfer and found out that it was stolen. He told me he got it from a cop on a trade and didn't run it when he took it in.

It happens. Guy should always check.
 
#7 ·
I have been very lucky over the years. I have not gotten myself into a situation like this. I know going to the police is an option for having the gun checked for being stolen. I also have used the HotGunz website to check them. I am assuming there are others like it. Just how up to date are these databases and are there better options ?

Jim
 
#8 ·
probably the best part of that is that the thief is likely to be
caught, the rightful owner is likely to get their property
back, and the young man didn't have to go to jail and learned
a valuable lesson for just a small amount of money.
a lawyer's fees would be many times that amount.
 
#9 ·
They can be mistaken when taking a gun based on serial number. I bought a Kel-Tec new from a local dealer many years ago. When I got rid of it I took it to a local pawn shop and put it on consignment. The cops came and took it from him as soon as he entered it into the records.

He called me and told me the gun I had left with him to sell was a stolen gun. I assured him there was no way that was the case. The police called me in and questioned me about it. I told them I had bought it brand new from a local gun shop and they told me to get a copy of the sales receipt for them so I did and took it back.

They still ran a trace on it and the trace came back as the gun being mine. So the police called me to come get my gun. Which I did and took it back to the pawn shop to sell.

Apparently someone up north somewhere had reported a similar gun as stolen from them but gave the wrong serial number.

BUT, at that price I'd automatically assume it stolen and have no part of it. No one who legally obtained it would part with that gun at the price the OP mentions, no body.
 
#13 ·
LONG ago: I have a good friend who bought a handgun from a gun shop in Kenai Alaska, he was told it was NEW, and it looked new...


I knew the police in that city and one day one of them called me asking if my friend was with me, he was. The officer asked if he had such and such gun, and he did, he was carrying it concealed right then. We took it to the police station, and we were informed it was stolen!!


So much for buying a NEW gun from THAT place! Anyway, I knew the officer well, and asked him what the sport shop paid for the gun, he said "a hundred bucks"...


DM
 
#14 ·
I once bought a Winchester pre 64 model 94 off of gunbroker for $350.00 a week after I picked it up from my FFL I get a call from a Sheriff"s Department in Texas asking me about the gun. I read them the serial number and they confirmed that it was a family heirloom that had been stolen by a cousin. The FFL dealer that I bought it from sent me a refund and I shipped the rifle to the Sheriff's office and they got it to the rightful owner. The rightful owner was so glad to have grandpa's gun back that he sent me a check for 100 bucks for my trouble. I wrote "void" on the front of the check and on the reverse side I wrote "not necessary"......just glad you got your grandpa's gun back!" Punch your cousin in the mouth once for me, would ya? Then signed it!
 
#15 · (Edited)
I had a 10mm S&W stolen out of my truck in broad daylight in a mall parking lot. They did a lot of damage
to the truck getting into it. My insurance covered the truck damage and paid me for the gun, thank
goodness I had written down the Ser# and gave it to the cops. Then I got a call from ATF, they recovered
my gun and wanted to return it to me. I told the agent that my insurance had paid me for the gun, so basicly
it belonged to them now.

He checked out the story and I never found out what they did with it after that. I thought about it later
and wondered if that agent was fishing or something, so I probably did the right thing. He never went
into any detail about how they had recovered the gun. Maybe in a crime or something?
 
#18 ·
I told the agent that my insurance had paid me for the gun, so basicly
it belonged to them now.
That does bring up an interesting question. What actually happened to the gun. I would agree with you that the insurance company owns it now. Since they probably don't want it. I would guess that they had the police department destroy it. It would have been interesting to know what the options would have been if you wanted it back.

Jim
 
#19 ·
All my electronics and my guns have the serial numbers recorded on a note pad in a safety deposit box. About ten years ago I had a S&W Model 29 stolen. Having recorded the serial number it found it's way back home about a year later after being attempted to be pawned one hundred miles from my home. The bad guy was caught and charged. In this day and age with computers, micro cameras it's hard for trash to get away with a lot of things.
 
#22 ·
had a Remington 700 in 300 wby stolen out of my house. The idiot who stole it was trying to sell it in a bar about 6 months later for 200 bucks. Just so happened the guy he offered it to was an off duty deputy sheriff. Takes all kinds of stupid.
 
#24 ·
Of course the obvious way to do away with the problem of stolen firearms would be to just get rid of all firearms....left wing thinking. My thinking however would to be to cut the cork suckers hand off what stole the gun. If he steals two of them then he is gonna have a hard time wiping his backside.....that'll learn em!
 
#25 ·
One of the problems with running the serial numbers on guns is that they are not unique. I work in law enforcement dispatch and have run many a gun and just about any serial number you run will come back with every gun with that serial number as a possible match regardless of the fact that you typed in a Glock 19 with serial number xyz123. Too many dispatchers and officers/deputies are not gun people and they make mistakes some times. You would really be surprised how many guns have been stolen with serial number 3!!!!!!
 
#26 ·
I have had two handgun seized in dealers place of business. One was a Glock 23 and the other was a Browning Hi-Power. TBI turned up to confiscate the stolen guns. We had several guns show up stolen where I was working. This was before the day easy checking the number. In the other case the police officer that surveyed the pawn shops had not done the numbers.

There is another glitch in the system. Running a gun means only that it is not in the NCIC computer. One dealer I know had a pretty good sized burglary. As it turned out none of the numbers had made it to the big computer. ATF got hooked up in that one.

There is another glitch. A friend had purchased as Ruger revolver from a police jobber. The gun turned up hot. The story was that the agency that traded the gun in had not removed the number from the big computer. Dealer was hot about this event. The agency who had the gun should have removed it from the computer.

Same thing happened to another individual. Guy was going through a divorce. His Colt revolver went missing supposedly with the soon to be ex-wife. The gun was found. Local police agency had never removed the number after the gun turned up. Gun turned up hot when on consignment at a regular business.
 
#28 ·
Hadn't been to long ago that we had a cop with the sheriff's department here that would take guns and pawn them. Some were his, some were confiscated from individuals and some were his service weapons assigned to him by the sheriff's Department. So, yeah you never know.
 
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