Americans own nearly 400 million guns. Five of them were recently lying on my parents’ living room floor in Dallas. Two revolvers looked like props from a ’70s cop movie. A pistol with a perforated barrel looked like it was from a space opera. There was a Field & Stream-worthy shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle right out of a mass shooting.
This collection of firearms will likely be my responsibility when my father is gone. I might not like it, but I may not have a choice. Last September, he drafted a gun trust and named me as trustee. When I told him I wasn’t particularly interested in taking responsibility for some of these weapons, he paused and thought for a minute.
“There’s no reason not to keep all of them,” he said.
There isn’t?
Everyone I know has a relationship with guns. They’re ingrained in American culture—our movies, books, and politics. The Bill of Rights devoted 27 words to the right to bear firearms but not one to the right to vote. Guns have put food on American tables and defended families. I’ve enjoyed shooting clays with a friend. Over the last few decades, however, the moral weight and awful responsibility of these weapons has grown heavier.
When I was in seventh grade, a classmate of mine took his life with a shotgun. Weeks before I graduated high school, two young men rampaged through Columbine High School, killing 13 people. These tragedies haven’t stopped. Suicide rates of American kids between the ages of 10 and 14 have soared 80 percent since 2001.Half of the time, it’s with a gun. The frequency of school shootings has quadrupled since the 1970s.
I’ve lived a little over four decades now. In that time, there’s been a dramatic decrease in murder and crime overall. Yet the nature of deadly gun violence has grown increasingly heinous.
Baby Boomers, though, are a different generation. They own more guns per person than any other demographic group. As many begin to think about their legacies, their guns will have to go somewhere. My 74-year-old father’s plans suddenly include me, but I’m not alone. Survey estimates suggest that more than a quarter of gun owners have acquired arms not by purchase but as gifts or inheritances.
AS THE TRUSTEE OF FIVE GUNS AND A SILENCER, I WILL GET TO DECIDE THEIR FATE UPON MY DAD’S DEATH.
In December, I attended the Original Fort Worth Gun Show, which bills itself as the largest in Texas, to hear from collectors about their own plans. Between tables of muskets, Safari-sized ammo and AR-15s, some told me of family members ecstatic about inheriting their collections. Others would sigh, glance at the ground, and confess the interest in their collection ended with them.
One had a solid plan. Ron, who gave only his first name, pawed a tin of Copenhagen as he told me about his advanced heart disease. After he dies, he said, he has arranged for his collection to go straight to auction. His daughter won’t have to deal with it.
Back in my parents’ home, I know these guns won’t just be carted off or disappear. They’re real wood and metal. Heavy, smooth, and cold. The shotgun’s silver receiver gleams in the living room light. Unlike an old couch that can be tossed to the curb, these items can be lethal if mishandled.
Glaring at the Smith & Wesson M&P 15—one of the most popular semi-auto rifles—I don’t know how to do even the simplest things, like verify it’s unloaded or check the safety. Couple that with a danger affecting similar models where it’s possible to experience “multiple discharges without [pulling] the trigger.” If I were to handle this weapon, it’s possible nothing would happen. Or, I could become one of the 27,000 Americans accidentally injured by a firearm each year.
The M&P 15 also happens to be the same model used in mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado; Highland Park, Illinois; and Parkland, Florida.
Some legacy.
The odd thing is, aside from the shotgun passed down from my great-grandfather, these guns don’t have sentimental value to me. My father and I never went shooting or hunting together. Although I knew there was a revolver somewhere in our family’s home, he never showed it to me or taught me how to shoot it. Instead, we spent hours casting fly lines in the middle of rippling trout streams, which is about as far from semi-automatic as you can get.
Rather, his collection was amassed largely in the last decade and propelled by a distrust in government. He has plenty of company. The sharpest spikes in gun purchases have occurred after mass shootings and precisely when talk of new gun laws grows the loudest. Yet it wasn’t gun regulation that soared after these tragedies, but thoughts, prayers, and profits for companies like Smith & Wesson.
My father’s political statement comes with a gun trust, a legal tool that has gained popularity among some gun owners in the last several years—and something I knew nothing about.
“A trust is created whenever it’s in writing and it has something of value,” attorney Robert Ray told me. The “something of value” could be anything from real estate to a gun collection. The trust becomes the owner of the assets. Trustees, like me, manage those assets.
As the trustee of five guns and a silencer, I will get to decide their fate upon my dad’s death. I started looking at my options.
It wasn’t long before I found Gatling Gun Rescue out of Dallas, which advertises its free gun removal service on its website: “Have Gun? We travel.” Graham, who asked I only use his first name, is a licensed private detective and firearms professional who runs the operation. He collects unwanted guns and provides a receipt of transfer, no questions asked. Widows and avid shooters short on space make up many of his online queries.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Graham told me, “Some people thought any stranger with a 104-degree fever was going to break down their front door.” When such apocalyptic visions proved more cough than bite, a late 2020 spike in gun purchases led to buyers’ remorse. He gets those inquiries as well.
Graham said he makes no money from the operation. Instead, the roughly 40 unwanted firearms he re-homes each year have ended up with groups like the Boy Scouts and in at least one museum.
Local police are another option. Not every department will accept firearms, though many do—including the Dallas and Plano police in my area. But what happens to them afterward can be opaque at best. A 2024 CBS investigation found several North Texas police agencies had sent 2,600 surrendered firearms to a contractor for what they thought was destruction. Instead, only some of the guns were destroyed while others were salvaged for parts and resold as repair kits.
Auction? I doubt the collection would garner much interest. Resell? The thought of walking into a gun store with a case of weapons to sell makes me feel uneasy.
As a gun-loving generation passes, we’re facing a wave of unwanted weapons. For some, there are just too many to house. For others, there’s simply no interest. As one collector told me at the gun show, “None of us has an expiration date on his wrist.” But, rest assured, hard decisions are coming.
“When you get older,” my father observed after I had first voiced my concerns about inheriting his gun collection in January, “you realize you spend your life acquiring things that most people don’t want.” Such an admission was as cathartic to me as it was haunting. What was I collecting that my daughter might be left to deal with years from now?
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