What happens if weapons are included in the estate upon the death of a relative? What are the obligations to which the person called to the inheritance is required? What can and must he do to avoid incurring penalties, including criminal penalties?
These questions are frequently asked in practice, in the case in which, in fact, among the assets that make up the inheritance there are also weapons. Let us therefore examine below what to do, always keeping an eye on the jurisprudence on the matter.
1. The obligation to report
The person called to the inheritance, who intends to accept the inheritance, if the axis also includes firearms, is obliged to report it to the public security office of the place where the weapon is located within 72 (seventy-two) hours from the moment in which he learns the material availability, in compliance with art. 38 TULPS
The obligation to report incumbent on the new holder regardless of the title of the purchase, be it a purchase or sale transaction or a deed of donation or, lastly, a hereditary succession.
This obligation exists regardless of whether or not the previous holder had made a regular declaration of it and regardless of whether or not the new holder already holds a license to hold and/or carry firearms with regard to other and different firearms. In this respect, it is completely irrelevant whether or not the weapons remain in the place where the de cuius, except for the events subsequent to the complaint, as indicated below in paragraph 3.
As has been reaffirmed by the jurisprudence, even more recently, in fact, "The obligation to report the possession of common firearms is functional, in fact, both to the need to allow the public security authority to know the quality and quantity of the weapons found in a given territory and to that of to be able to immediately identify the subjects possessing weapons, to whom, if necessary, to issue the immediate delivery order for reasons of public order" (so Cassation, Section I Pen., 15 February 2023, n. 5943).
2. The penal sanction envisaged in the event of failure to report
For the case of omitted report, and therefore of non-compliance with the obligation set forth in art. 38 TULPS, the penalty is not the one provided by art. 697 of the criminal code, as is currently reported, but the more severe one provided for by the combined provisions of articles 2 and 7 of law no. 895/1967.
This was recently reaffirmed by the recent aforementioned ruling, in the light of which it is clarified that “Non-compliance with the aforementioned reporting obligation was sanctioned by art. 697 code pen. until the entry into force of the law n. 497/1974 which, modifying the art. 7 law n. 895/1967, introduced an autonomous criminal case through the combined provision of articles 2 and 7 of the mentioned law n. 895/1967" (already compliant Court of Cassation, Section I Pen., 19 January 2015, n. 22563; Court of Cassation, Section I Pen., 21 February 2020, n. 15199).
In particular, pursuant to art. 2 of the law n. 895/1967, as amended by Legislative Decree 26 October 2010, n. 204, it is expected that “Anyone who illegally possesses weapons or parts of them, ammunition, explosives, aggressive chemicals and devices indicated in the previous article for any reason is punished with imprisonment from one to eight years and with a fine ranging from 3.000 to 20.000 euros ”. The art. 7 then provides that "The penalties respectively established in the previous articles are reduced by a third if the facts provided therein refer to common firearms, or parts of them, suitable for use, referred to in article 44 of the royal decree of 6 May 1940, n . 635. The penalties established in the penal code for contraventions of the rules concerning weapons not covered by this law are tripled. In any case, the arrest cannot be less than three months".
3. What happens after the denunciation, depending on whether the heir decides to keep the weapons or not?
Once the obligation to report has been necessarily fulfilled, the heir can evidently decide to keep the weapons or not to keep them.
In the first case, unless he already holds a firearms licence, he will have to apply for it to the territorially competent Police Headquarters, if he intends to transfer the firearms. A mere permit will suffice, if you simply intend to change the place of detention of the weapons.
In the second case, once the weapons have been reported, he will be able to sell them to third parties (in possession of a firearms license or clearance), who will in turn have to report their possession, producing a copy of the private transfer agreement and of the detention report of the transferor; or, the heir will be able to scrap the weapons, making a request to the Public Security Authority, which will provide for their withdrawal.
Conclusions
Even in the case of hereditary succession, therefore, the possession of weapons is subject to specific and precise precautions by our legal system.
It will therefore be good for the interested parties to be aware of the obligations imposed by the regulations in force and not to underestimate the – very significant – consequences envisaged for the case of their violation.
Photo: US Marine Corps
