With the holiday season upon us, many of you are probably contemplating purchasing a gun for family or friends. Last year the NSSF’s Bill Brassard wrote an excellent blog post on the subject …

The first thing to remember if you’re thinking about giving someone a gun is that . . . it’s a gun!  You already know that ownership of a firearm brings with it some serious legal and ethical obligations that other consumer products don’t.  So let’s look at some questions you may have about giving a firearm as a gift.

The first question you have to ask is whether the intended recipient can legally own the firearm where he or she lives.  More than 20,000 different gun laws on the books, even the kinds of firearms that law-abiding citizens can own vary from place to place; for example, juveniles (under age 18) generally speaking are precluded by law from possessing a handgun. Check out the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) website for an overview of local laws and, whatever you do, don’t forget that you can never under any circumstances transfer a firearm to someone you know — or have reasonable cause to believe — legally can’t own one.  That’s a federal felony, so be careful.