The Conversation Nobody Wants
This week’s column is about what happens to your firearms when you die.
I am aware that is not a cheerful opening, and I thought about softening it. I decided not to, because the softening is exactly why so few people deal with this, and because the families who get caught out by it are always the ones who assumed there would be time.
What actually happens
When a licence holder dies, the licence dies with them. It does not pass to a spouse, a son or a daughter, and the firearms do not become ordinary property that can simply sit in the safe while the estate is sorted out.
What that means in practice is that a grieving family, often in the first days after a death, finds itself holding firearms that nobody in the household is licensed to possess. They are frequently unsure what is in the safe, unsure what any of it is worth, unsure who to ring, and frightened of getting it wrong. Sometimes nobody even knows the combination.
In that situation people do one of two things. They panic and hand everything to police, including items of real financial or family value that could lawfully have stayed in the family. Or they do nothing, leave the firearms where they are, and unknowingly create a serious legal problem for themselves.
Neither of those outcomes is necessary.
Your family should never have to work this out for the first time on the worst week of their lives.
What you can do now
This is not complicated, and it does not take long. What it takes is deciding to do it.
| Write an inventory. | Every firearm, with make, model, calibre and serial number, and a realistic note of what each is worth. Keep it with your will and tell somebody where it is. A safe full of unidentified property is what turns this into a crisis. |
| Say what you want to happen. | Which items should stay in the family and with whom, which should be sold, and whether anything has meaning beyond its value. Your executor cannot honour wishes they have never been told. |
| Make sure somebody can open the safe. | Your executor or your partner needs the combination or the key, and needs to know where it is. This sounds obvious. It is the single most common problem. |
| Deal with the collection pieces properly. | If you hold items of significant value, or anything with a history, get them documented and valued while you are here to explain what they are. Nobody else will know why the old service rifle mattered. |
| Leave a name to ring. | Your branch secretary, a trusted dealer, or our office. A single phone number on the front of the inventory saves a family a week of worry. |
| Talk to your family. | Once, briefly, while nothing is wrong. Not a ceremony. Just so that the first time they think about this is not the day after someone dies. |
If you are the one left holding it
There are lawful pathways. Firearms can be transferred to a licensed family member, sold through a licensed dealer, surrendered or donated if that is what the family wants. There are arrangements that allow firearms to be held securely while an estate is settled. What you should not do is leave them sitting unaddressed, and what you should not do is assume that handing everything in is the only option available to you.
Ring the office. Ring your branch. This is a situation our people deal with regularly and there is no need to work it out alone.
The part that is not about paperwork
There is a reason this matters beyond compliance.
For a lot of families, a firearm is the object that carries the memory. It is a grandfather’s rifle, or the shotgun somebody learned on, or the one that was carried on every trip for forty years. Those things have a weight that has nothing to do with their value, and when they are lost because nobody knew what to do, that loss is permanent and entirely avoidable.
I would rather every member of this association spent half an hour on this than have one more family lose something that mattered to them because the paperwork was never done.
Half an hour
That is genuinely all it takes. An inventory, a note of your wishes, the combination somewhere your executor can find it, and one phone number.
Do it this month. Then put it away and do not think about it again, which is the whole point of having done it.
Until next week: keep ’em on target, in the field and on the range!
Jai Rowell
President — SSAA NSW
WHAT YOU TELL ME MATTERS MOST – ASK THE PRESIDENT
Every week I hear from members and branches, by phone, by email, and standing around at ranges. If you ask me what the most important part of this job is, that is it. Listening to members. Everything else follows from it.
So, I want to open up another avenue. If you have a burning question about SSAA NSW, your membership, your discipline, or where we are heading, send it through to me at jai.rowell@nsw.ssaa.org.au. Each week I will publish a selection of the questions I receive and answer them here, straight, in this column.
No question is too basic and none of them are off limits. If you are wondering about it, chances are a few thousand other members are wondering the same thing
ABOUT THIS COLUMN
Each week I pull up a seat at the bench to talk about what’s happening across SSAA NSW, the wins, the setbacks, what’s on the political radar, and my thoughts on whatever is front of mind, from the matters members are raising with me to whatever is shaping the sport that week. I’ll put our volunteers where they belong, at the front, because they’re the backbone of everything we do, and I’ll back the industry that keeps our sport strong. The promise is in the name: plain talk, no spin, and I’ll always tell it to you straight.
