Interesting situation I heard about, not sure if it's true but raises the question, what would you do?

You buy a pallet of returned merchandise from a surplus reseller. If you're not familiar, these places buy entire semi loads of returned & damaged merchandise from places like Amazon, Fedex, etc then they either sort and sell it or sell by the pallet if they don't have time to sort them all. Supposedly this guy bought a full pallet and found mixed within the other items a firearm in the original packaging but missing a couple accessories.

Would you even open the can of worms trying to take it back to the surplus seller? They are not an FFL, no reason they would have to be receiving said item, and probably wouldn't know what to do with it. Keep it? Call the feds?

As my crimnal defense prof stated repeatedly: "The most important thing you can teach your clients is to Shut the F*** Up."

Is this an AFT trap?

I guess it’s possible. I know an old guy that ordered one of those Glock conversions. He put a pistol in it and didn’t like it. He returned it to wherever he ordered it from only to discover a few weeks later his Glock was missing. After looking all over for it he remembered that the last time he saws it was when he trying it in the conversion. Luckily for him the company found it in their warehouse still in the conversion kit.

Not a trap, check post history, I've been here twice as long as you. 14 years of "long-con" to post a "AFT trap" asking what you would do? ROFL...


I could see that happening. But a gun in its packaging? This person claimed the pallet was sold to him as a pallet of Amazon damaged items; Amazon doesn't sell guns so there was definitely some confusion somewhere...

My first concern would be whether the firearm was ever reported stolen.
There is no reason to return the firearm to the reseller.

My only scenario on this would be it happening at a shipping hub or in transit. A couple of random pallets get damaged and some idiot throws a box off one pallet on another by mistake and it gets wrapped with plastic and sent out. It’s kinda far fetched but considering the amount of damaged rewrapped freight I have received and the quality of some employees I’d say it’s possible. They would definitely be missing the firearm of a manifest at some point.

There is a company that sells pallets of Lowes, Walmart and other chains returns. One of their distribution hubs is somewhat local. It is supposedly in a warehouse that is shared with Bass Pro and Cabellas. If that’s true it could possibly make the odds a little better that it could happen.

If the OP is friends with a local police officer, he could ask the officer if he could run the S/N thru NCIC to see if it was reported missing/stolen.

I think you could make a case that you bought it.   Would it be any different than buying a house and finding a pistol in the rafters or a shotgun in the closet wall?  You bought a house and the contents that remain.  


You did not specifically buy a firearm, you bought a pallet of goods.  Is that the way firearms are supposed to be transferred? No of course not but you did buy it.



We have a place not far away that calls itself the bargain bin or some such tripe.   They buy the same stuff, returns.  I walked through once, way the hell not worth it, items marked at suggested retail price but yet were in battered boxes, wrong boxes, damaged, inoperative.  There were a lot of overstock discontinued items but I could not find a single bargain in 20 minutes.  The place has been open two years now and I am shocked.  Pretty sure it is tied to the John Deere shop who also sells at suggested retail and the owner will throw you out of the Deere dealership if you try to dicker.

Which is a misuse of the FBI data systems. Officers who get caught doing personal data searches lose their access.

OP isn't the one with the gun so OP can't do that. It's just something I heard talking guns with some friends. I guess it's the friend of someone that was involved in the conversation.





Would it be though? If there is legitimate concern a firearm that was found or received is stolen wouldn't calling a law enforcement officer to verify it's status be the whole point of having the system?

I think the line between personal and professional can get quite blurry in some circumstances.

Either way, it's a moot point bc I'm not the one that received the firearm, although I do know many LEOs that would do this...

I've been told by more than one LE, both federal and local, that what was described would not be considered "official business", ie pursuant to a bona fide investigation.

I'm an FFL, even we don't have the ability to access a federal database of stolen firearms.

If not involved, I wouldn't attempt to get involved in this case.

I can speak from what would most likely happen in most towns in MA if reported to the police. Not only would they run it thru NCIC, but they would confiscate the gun and the "owner" would never get it back under any circumstance other than a very lengthy lawsuit that would cost exponentially what the gun is worth.
I would never expect or want an FFL to have access to NCIC (and I'm saying that as a retired police officer). On the other hand obtaining a gun under suspicious circumstances and reporting same to the police would be official business, with results dependent on what is done with the gun.