TexasCHLforum.com

My apologies if this has been asked before. I did a search here and on google and didn't find a sufficient answer.

Hypothetical but certainly could be a real situation.

If you buy a gun from a private citizen how does another private citizen check to see if the gun in stolen? If there's a simple way to do this I'd like to make it a practice of checking serial numbers before I buy any gun from a non dealer/ffl.

The obvious option is to call the local police station but I'd rather not have the attention directed at me if a serial number I ever ask about turns up to belong to a stolen weapon, even if I don't currently have the weapon. That would just look bad and i'd rather avoid the hassle to begin with.